When state-organized violence targeted protesters near the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, students, joined by their professors, responded by blocking the faculty and demanding accountability. The protests quickly escalated into a country-wide movement calling for the depoliticization of public institutions and respect for the law and the Constitution. Paradoxically, the Serbian President, oscillating between autocrat and “stabilocrat”, remains the Constitution’s most notorious violator, underscoring that grassroots solidarity across Serbia is the most powerful weapon against the Leviathan.

Generation Z

Often dismissed as detached digital natives immersed in virtual worlds, students revealed themselves instead as informed, socially engaged, and tech-savvy political actors, unsettling outdated politicians still rooted in the toxic legacy of the 1990s: division, hatred, and entrenched corruption networks.

Generation Z cultivates alternative networks that resist this toxicity, especially in a region shaped by entangled political imaginaries. Though distant from formal political parties, they remain deeply political. Their disruptive, embodied presence in public space is itself a political act, one that creates atmospheric communities and radical friendships in defiance of the banality of mainstream political discourse. Their rejection of party affiliation appears as a strategic response to the systematically fragmented and disoriented Serbian opposition.

Practicing a “politics of swarming”, a decentralized, fluid, and interconnected mode of collective action and decision-making, they move quickly and act decisively, guided by a sharp socio-political and ecological awareness. From the outset, they reminded the president that he lacks the constitutional authority to address their demands.

In a time of globally accelerating fascism, those who do not obey in advance are drawn to voices grounded in truth, with skin in the game, voices that refuse the collective disbelief in the possibility of a better future.

Who joined? 

Professors and rectors stood with students, except in Novi Pazar, where the rector cut off heating in blocked university buildings, prompting students to withdraw their recognition of her authority. Despite facing repercussions, including the loss of salaries for refusing to call the police on students, many professors formally joined the blockades.

Families and people across Serbia showed solidarity through deeply personal acts of care: offering food, accommodation, transportation, and emotional support.

Protesters carried placards with diverse demands and slogans. Theatres declared they were protesting “against the absurd,” while artists insisted: “It is not artistic to be silent.” The Independent Cultural Scene, the Belgrade Philharmonic, and bookstores joined the movement. Teachers from elementary and high schools participated, and kindergartens sent messages of support, including one placard held by a little girl: “I have no connections for kindergarten, so I came to protest.”

Farmers joined with slogans like “The farmer feeds, the student defends,” arriving on tractors bearing signs such as “For plowing and guarding students.” Miners, public transport workers, bikers, veterans, athletes, and medical professionals followed. One sign read: “Doctors heal the heart, students heal the system; chiropractors treat the spine,” while pharmacists proclaimed, “We have serum against cobra venom.”

The Bar Association offered free legal aid. The Coalition for Media Freedom voiced support. The IT sector joined with the message: “System error. To avoid shutdown, please reset.”

A turning point came when pensioners joined in powerful intergenerational solidarity. Grandparents marched with grandchildren holding placards like: “When I grow up, I will be a pensioner,” and “Don’t lie to my grandma!” These acts of unity revealed a will for change—yet Serbia could and should do better.

Theatre workers were among the first to respond, observing fifteen minutes of silence before performances, followed by raised red-gloved hands and placards, actions that scandalized the pro-regime director of the National Theatre. Later, theatres across the country canceled performances for a week and launched the Traveling Theatre in Belgrade, a protest procession connecting venues and joined by students, cultural workers, and others committed to solidarity.

Atelje 212 created a stirring performance to the Serbian version of “Let the Sunshine In,” a nod to their 1969 production of Hair (the fourth in the world), with placards echoing the lyrics, such as “Eyes to eyes with the world.”

While protests gained momentum, the government and president proposed “dialogues” that functioned more like manipulative monologues. As one female student, assaulted by regime-linked hooligans, put it, “real dialogue is impossible with a broken jaw.”

In response to car attacks on their members, the Belgrade Philharmonic went on strike. While the attackers remain free, peaceful protesters face swift persecution, despite the regime’s absurdly repeated claim: “Now, all the demands have been fulfilled.” Meanwhile, a member of Parliament from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party dismissed striking cultural workers, especially actors and actresses, as “socially irrelevant snobby producers of bullshit” funded by “our good state.” In contrast, a Radio Belgrade presenter mounted his own acoustic protest by reading a propaganda script live on air, then crumpling and tossing it aside.

Radio Beograd, jutarnji program 2. februara.

Slušati do kraja 🎙️

(Proverio na RTS Planeti, autentično je.) pic.twitter.com/ltZncZjuY1

— Nebojša  (@preslicavanje) February 2, 2025

The informal collective Culture in Blockade, operating through plenums, amplified the protests and issued its own demands. They symbolically locked the Ministry of Culture from the outside and reclaimed the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, mirroring students’ liberation of the Student Cultural Center, a building on the verge of privatization and the site where Marina Abramović began her career. From New York, Abramović honored the students as “heroes of today,” reenacting their silent street protest.

A petition for global artistic and academic support was promoted by Wiener Festwochen backing protesters and BITEF festival’s director, having already become persona non grata within the official cultural establishment after Milo Rau opened the Festival with a critique of Serbian and German policies on lithium mining.

Diasporic Pumping

Students have lit a spark in the diaspora, after all, leaving is also a form of protest. Their ongoing “performances” for global attention are deeply moving and creative, as seen in the Where is Justice? gathering at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, or through fundraising gestures like the donation from a Yugoslavia-themed Kafana Quiz Night, aimed at supporting teachers facing financial state terror for being deemed too disobedient to receive their salaries.

Thankfully, support foundations for these workers already exist, one of which recently received a donation from Belgrade’s drag queens, who organized a charity show.

The phrase by German dramatist Heiner Müller “wie es bleibt, ist es nicht” (“what remains, is not as it is”) resonates on many levels in Serbia today, where demagoguery no longer finds easy ground.

Diasporic support also came from the group Academic Solidarity with Students from Serbia. Yet early efforts to mobilize institutional political or academic backing were met with resistance. For example, a solidarity letter from Serbian students was promptly removed by the Free University of Berlin’s student group, while the Berlin University of the Arts canceled a planned discussion, fearing repercussions. Such reactions are unsurprising, after all, the Free University had already canceled a talk by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the occupied Palestinian territories, raising serious questions about just how “free” the institution truly is.

Unpacking the Class Question

Solidarity is the protests’ most vital force. In that spirit, ecological activists, mainly from rural areas, often cooked for students, temporarily setting aside their own causes. A student victory, they understood, would strengthen their battles against Rio Tinto, the demolition of public landmarks like the Old Railway Bridge (already nearly gone), the Ministry of Defence, Belgrade Fair, and others.

This affective wave of solidarity bridged Serbia’s long-standing urban-rural divide, momentarily turning the metropolis and the province into comrades. Students became a unifying force among teachers, farmers, workers, and academics, disrupting the melancholia of class divisions and sparking two general strikes. Though Serbia’s crushed and fragmented unions make it far from a Greek-style model, these intersectional strikes embodied a shared emancipatory potential. Their momentum even impacted supermarket boycotts across ex-Yugoslav countries, revitalizing civil disobedience as a tool of solidarity.

The SPP’s absurd response to the general strike, urging members to dine lavishly and fill their tanks, triggered disbelief among lower-class supporters, many of whom ironically celebrated this grotesque display of wealth. For 13 years, Serbia has been trapped in a Midsummer Night’s Nightmare, with pro-regime media acting as an evil fairy, persuading people to distrust their own common sense. Instead of questioning whether they can afford the proposed purchases, people are encouraged to cheer the president and denounce “foreign mercenaries” supposedly out to destroy the “economic tiger.”

After the March 15 protest, the same voices accused the movement of being driven by elites, as if students under blockade weren’t surviving on donations, and education workers didn’t earn below-average salaries. That same day, the government staged yet another class performance, parading “real” farmers with old tractors to contrast with EU-funded ones bearing modern equipment.

Migratory gaze of a theatre scholar

As someone who once left in search of something better, spending years abroad studying theatre as a space to test the utopian, Serbia now feels like home again. It has become a vast, community-based political theatre, where student plenums have seeded citizens’ assemblies and experiments in direct democracy.

Along the way, I came to realize that theatre is not immune to corruption, especially where power is exercised. It can become rigid, unresponsive, even cowardly, particularly during periods of “systemic irrelevance,” as was painfully evident during the COVID-19 pandemic in Berlin. Losing privilege is hard, but it is far more disheartening when former rebels become obedient, sheltered by the social mantra of solidarity at a safe distance.

In today’s Serbia, theatre and its people have proven their relevance to systemic change. Street theatre has become a central form through which the Jürgen Habermas concept of public sphere is not only reflected but actively reimagined. This performative ecology has achieved what a disillusioned German theatre director Thomas Ostermeier might never have expected from his Enemy of the People.

What many theatre scholars see as spatial or institutional limitation was upended the day after the state deployed sonic weapons against its citizens. The Terazije Theatre opened its doors to the movement, stating: Tonight, we invited our dear audience to complete the silence that was violently interrupted last night.

This Serbian solidarity has become contagious, prompting Yanis Varoufakis to name Serbian students as models of global resistance. Yet solidarity offers no individual safety, especially not in 2025 Serbia. And perhaps, it shouldn’t. Because as long as solidarity persists, there will always be a we.

*This text was written in March 2025 as part of an analysis of the performativity of the students-led protests in Serbia.

The post Allies in Blockade: How Serbia’s Students Sparked a Movement of Protest and Care appeared first on Untold.

Today, we opened our archives too.

In full honesty to you, our dear reader, this opening has its origin in a time when this over-consumed cloth was impossible to rip – the only reality we knew and inhabited. In this spirit of acceptance and defeat, however, we believed there was still something meaningful to say about a past, a revolutionary time, that felt closed and sealed forever as a political project.

You can retrace this origin of this collection in the acts of documenting and archiving that, since the revolution, had been powerful tools for recording the realities of war. They also became a form of resistance against oppression and the foundation for demands of justice and accountability in Syria and its diaspora. The preservation of stolen, smuggled, salvaged materials – be it videos, memoirs, images, testimonies, or stories – has been a powerful medium to keep the revolutionary ethos alive, proving to the world that this ‘event’ existed.

A living tapestry 

We envisioned the introduction of this collection on the act of archiving as both a continuation of this trajectory and a departure from it. Our endeavour sought to capture how archiving infiltrates the way we think, speak, and attempt to write about the revolution – what came before and after – as our own thoughts penetrate facts. The constitution of these archives waives the personal and the collective, the lived and the imagined, the past and the present. 

They are fragments that unfold as a living tapestry – a clock, a song, the sea’s infinite waves, a broken TV, the green buses and a bureaucratic site. Each fragment of our archive vibrates with its own resonance, defying the constraints of order and resisting unified narratives. Each word becomes a gesture of defiance, a refusal to let fleeting moments of hope and despair fade unread. 

Before December 8th, 2024, these fragments were all we had to comprehend a history shaped by loss and exile – to make a claim on time through what was archived and written. But when the unimaginable turns into reality, time returns to the present, carrying the possibility of hope and restoration which also infiltrated our own words. The clock of history ticks once more and time starts to flow again. It reminds us that history – and these archives – are not static repository of “what was”, but a living, creative force that shifts and breathes, bearing the weight of what was and the promise of what could be. New light illuminates spaces of grief and melancholia, fear and humiliation we thought we understood, but never fully grasped. What we once treated as eternal had to be reimagined as the cloth and its threads are now ripped apart.

Writing, archiving

This has been true prior to December 8th, 2024 and, even more, in its aftermath. As we wrote down these archival fragments, we noticed their becoming a conduit through which history is continually reimagined and reshaped. These fragmented archives weave together the disconnected threads of history and breathe life into memory. Time collapses and reforms, no longer linear, but circular, offering moments where endings become beginnings, where loss unfolds into the possibility of renewal. Our act of writing became a transformative vessel, a time machine that navigates the fragile boundaries between memory and the present, contributing to the formation of these archives and their constant reconfiguration.

Writing and archiving are not merely intellectual exercises but emotional and political acts – a refusal to surrender memory to silence. Even objects shed their passivity and become subjects—autonomous, breathing entities. The Citadel of Aleppo evokes childhood – a labyrinth of the past, reshaped by the revolution. A bridge is formed between these sites of memory, embodying both shelter and loss. The loss is palpable in the devastation of Aleppo, but also in the silence of the sea, which carries countless untold stories, dreams of survival, and death. A clock, once silent, begins to tick defiantly, reclaiming lost time from the abyss of forgetting. On the dance floor in Berlin, the echoes of Abdul Baset al-Sarout’s voice merge into a new rhythm, intertwining Syria 2011 with the neon-lit nights of 2019, where past revolutions dissolve into pulsating beats and scattered fragments of hope. 

In our attempt to write down our own archive and archiving our own fragments, we pursued meanings in the chaotic and fragmented expanses of memory. In a world where ruptures and losses shape the surface of history, we search for fragments whose stretching towards each other offer insights into the “how” and “why” amidst the “what.” This search for meanings becomes a vibrant and fluid, at times even fugacious, confrontation with the past. Rather than dwelling in simple explanations, we sought meanings in the ambiguity of experience.

In what follows, dear reader, we share the meanings carried by the echoes of lost voices, pieces of revolution, the bitterness of missed opportunities, the taste of unexpected renewals. Yet, meanings, like archives, remain ever elusive – a fleeting shimmer, a thought we believed we’ve grasped, only to see it slip away. In this pursuit, these archives become spaces of metamorphosis – an ongoing process that confronts us with questions we may never fully answer,  propelling us forward today, as they did yesterday.

This text was written prior to February 2025 and is part of the dossier “Eternity Unwoven,” curated by Veronica Ferreri and Inana Othman.

The dossier is a collaboration of Archivwar with Untoldmag and Arabpop. Its Italian version is available in Arabpop Vol. 8 “Cose” (Arabpop logo)

Graphic project: Greg Olla

The publisher remains available to rights holders regarding any images for which it was not possible to identify or contact the owners.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Resarch and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101064513 “ARCHIVWAR – Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria.” 

Funded by the European Union. Views and options expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Execute Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The post Eternity Unwoven: Echoes of the Unwritten and Poetics of the Archive appeared first on Untold.

Do you think it will not come, my love?

I watch you with each tick of the clock,

Arriving from afar, my love

Fairouz’s words caught me off guard—her voice piercing the heavy shadows of memory like a sudden shaft of light, perfectly synchronized with a video of Homs’s Clock Tower Square in an Instagram reel. Those brief twenty-one seconds were enough to reshape an entire archive of the last 13 years. Years that began with a revolution shaking the walls of silence, restoring our ability to hope—before it was all veiled in the fog of eternity, and its heartbreaks exploded across every horizon.

Suddenly, the ticking of the clock returned, transcending both time and sound. It pulled us inward, into the depths where we had buried our disappointments, our hopes, and a deep sorrow tinted by the futility of all things—no matter how dazzling on the surface—when measured against our shattered faith in justice, and the specter of ruin clinging to our souls. The voices of our disappeared, silenced in Assad’s slaughterhouses, still echo. Those prisons appeared to us as impenetrable and everlasting, despite everything we had documented, shared, written, screamed, and shown the world. Then came the chimes, gathering the scattered fragments of our souls, flooding them with feeling. It wasn’t just a fleeting glimpse of the past but a rupture, piercing the core of the spirit, dragging it through every station of pain and heartbreak—only to return it to one single moment: the now. To the lingering doubt that perhaps tomorrow has not been completely stolen from us, that the dreams, however shattered and dispersed, might yet find a way to gather and be reborn!

In those few seconds, my heart trembled, and my soul gasped for breath, as if the dream we had nearly forgotten could still return, could once again be our guiding compass—a sudden, magical moment after a long and relentless darkness.

 December 7, 2024

How do I describe the taste of hope returning suddenly after years of forced absence—after we had taught ourselves to live without it, to accept its loss just to survive with what remained of us?

A few fleeting seconds in that reel were enough to stir a feeling I thought had vanished forever. It was more than hope—it was the return of tomorrow as a space for dreaming, for imagining, for waiting.

On this very day, the gates of Adra Prison opened. The same prison where, over years of captivity, my father wove me a beaded bag—bead by bead—as if stitching together a life in a time held captive.

In the realm of the unforeseen,
where prison carves its borders like a blind sculptor,
life takes shape through sound—
an eternal ritual defying time’s barrenness.

But what is time, when it knows no edges?
Our memory, mother, is a hidden prison,
a void that devours the past,
carving hollows of forgetting.

Yet in its wakefulness,
life is reborn—and with it, a quiet rage,
spilling into poems,
into voices that carry us forward.

Mama, you taught me to weave rhyme with my body,
to dance when words abandoned me,
because voice rises from the body—
a typewriter translating pain into motion.

But why do our bodies remain silent now,
when we are more parched than ever for meaning?
No, mother, this silence is not the salt that preserves, as you used to say,
but the silence of a room thick with shadows—
stories trapped in cellars,
a room without light,
where time loses its threads.

Fear, mother, is the shadow of a coiled poem,
spinning without end, searching for a lost horizon.
And yet, beneath it, the voice remains—
a monument of light,
a will that draws us back to the beginning,
again and again.

Yesterday

The opposition factions declared their control over Aleppo and their advance toward other Syrian cities: Hama, Homs. I did not yet realize that tomorrow would be the day when, after decades, the archive of oppression, fear, dreams, and exile would be unearthed. A day when the Assad regime’s legacy of horror and destruction, still too vast to fully reckon with, would be laid bare. It would be a day no Syrian would ever forget.

We didn’t sleep that night. At that moment, the archive of all those years came alive—just like us. We recalled who we had been, before disappointment and the needs of survival overtook us, before our lived reality drifted away from our inner selves—deprived, wounded, and haunted by sorrow.

I have always been drawn to archives. I imagined them as extraordinary time-traveling machines, capable of crossing eras and geographies, gathering infinite worlds where emotions and perceptions converge. But what captivated me most was their relationship to loss: the loss of what was once familiar, cherished, longed for, only to become exiled, deferred, erased, or forbidden. Like a homeland, like my father in prison, like the memory of revolution and the dream itself.

When Assad and the Baath Party seized power in the early 1970s, ushering in what came to be known as Assad’s Eternity, a new phase of political and spatial monopolization began. A culture of submission and repression took hold, as the regime built an ever-expanding archive of fear—etched into our bodies, embedded in our daily lives, woven into our language—recycled and passed down through generations. This archive took many forms: the memory of the Hama Massacre in the 1980s, the prisons and detention centers, the imposed language of obedience, the Baathist indoctrination in schools that sought to shape the Syrian individual in the image of the regime. Then, at the turn of the millennium, a fleeting specter of hope appeared in the form of the Damascus Spring—a moment that quickly revealed itself to be a carefully laid trap, witnessing yet another betrayal of hope.

 The Hour of Dreams and the Making of the Impossible

On March 15, 2011, the Syrian revolution erupted like a sudden flash of lightning, piercing the veil of silence and fear, forging the impossible. Despite the crushing weight of disappointment that later settled over the revolutionary dream, a new archive was born—one that was digital, spoken, and alive in ways unlike anything before it. It carried the faces and voices of the revolution, inscribing a memory that could never be erased. Homs’ Clock Tower Square bore witness to some of the most defining moments of this memory, in a city that carried titles like a mirror reflecting its people: Umm al-Faqir (Mother of the Poor), Umm al-Hijara al-Sawda (Mother of the Black Stones), the capital of humor and wit—until it earned yet another title: The Capital of the Revolution. That square held everything: a peaceful protest that turned into a massacre, then into a funeral and mass arrests, then into a sit-in, only to be followed by yet another massacre. The cycle of blood and siege rewrote tragedy into new scenes, replaying the same horror in different forms.

Clock Tower Square was more than just a place; it became a living symbol of the revolution, a pulse that reached into every rebellious neighborhood in Homs, every town and village that raised the banner of freedom. As A., a friend and activist from Al-Qusayr, recalled:

“After the Clock Tower Massacre, the regime tried to erase its traces from our collective memory. They banned us from gathering there, from demonstrating in its space. So, we said: If we cannot reach the Clock Tower, then let the Clock Tower come to us. And so, symbolic replicas of the square’s clock appeared in every revolutionary neighborhood”, like shattered fragments of Homs’ beating heart, scattered everywhere.

The songs of the revolution—and yours, mother—
carried us like the waves of the Mediterranean once did every summer,
before we arrived in Germany.
Rhythms bore our dreams, and the weight of forty years of silence,
holding us—both within our homeland and in exile.
Hope was a phoenix, a key,
carving waves of meaning into words.
On March 15, thirteen years ago, the clock struck zero,
marking the beginning of a future without end.
The voices of freedom wove the fabric of our being,
and let the voice break through—
in the kingdom of silence.

The Temporality of Siege

Amid the darkness of the siege that engulfed Homs’s opposition neighborhoods between 2011 and 2014, suffering was not the only story. The siege was more than just walls tightening around lives—it became a stage of resilience, a space where human creativity emerged in survival, resistance, and the pursuit of life, even as death loomed from every side.

In the besieged neighborhoods of Baba Amr, Khalidiya, and al-Qusour, life pulsed with scenes of solidarity and innovation. The struggle for survival unfolded in stories that refused to be confined by suffering alone, revealing moments of everyday resistance: a mother teaching the neighborhood children, youth building networks of mutual support, and laughter echoing in defiance of the shellfire.  

 The siege was not merely a tool of destruction—it was a test of the will to endure. As one resident of Homs described: “I don’t want to speak only of our suffering, but of the life we lived. Of our laughter, our solidarity, our attempts to stay alive.” To exist under siege was an act of resistance in itself—one that refused surrender and inscribed a new memory of the revolution, a memory that did not speak only of oppression but of the human spirit’s relentless fight to live.

 The Green Buses… The End

One of the most searing scenes etched into memory was the evacuation of Homs’s residents from the besieged neighborhoods aboard the green buses—a moment pulsing with grief, betrayal, and despair.

As part of a 2014 agreement brokered under UN supervision, these buses carried the last opposition fighters out of Old Homs, sealing the regime’s full control. But the green buses became yet another symbol of a time when dreams were suffocated. Since 2011, the Syrian regime had used them to forcibly displace the people of Homs, after years of siege and relentless bombardment that had drained every last possibility of hope and survival.

The Tomorrow That Came After Eternity

On December 8, 2024, the Assad regime fell, ending 53 years of continuous repression. The impossible—the dream Syrians had carried for so long—had finally become reality. That day marked a turning point—a moment when Syrian history began to be rewritten. The people of Syria began to sketch a new image of hope, one that returned despite disappointment and deep fragility, pulsing once more in their hearts, no matter how far they had been scattered across the exiles of time, geography, and grief.

Today, the clock ticks again—this time as a symbol of freedom, of justice reclaimed, of a homeland being rebuilt. The revolution was never only against a dictatorship; it was also a struggle to reclaim stolen time. Its return was a rupture, a shock that reshaped both our existence and our memory. It was not just a moment in history—it was a bridge between past and future, a long-lost dream finally stepping into the present.

The Syrian Archive: A Guardian of Pain, Fragility, and a Window to the Future

The archive of the revolution is both a child of hope and its creator, brimming with urgency and awakening. Through documenting their revolution and preserving their lived experiences since March 15, 2011, Syrians have defied the temporal void that repression sought to impose. This archive—holding the stories of protests, political activism, detainees, massacre victims, and mothers who lost their children—is not just a record of the past. It was not just a reminder of the past, but a bet on another turn of the future.

The Death of Eternity and the Return of Time

I remember—
but my memory is not a bridge to the past.
It is a window opening onto a distant horizon.

The historian stands at a threshold,
not only to look back,
but to weave time into a tapestry—
a tapestry of hope entwined with sorrow,
fragments and shadows forming a space pulsing with meaning
for those who dare to dive into its depths.

Look at me—
yesterday, I was a prison for a tyrant,
a dusty mass of hollow words,
where the voices of the marginalized faded within my walls,
and their stories disappeared into my cells.

But today, I am the pulse rising from beneath the rubble,
a light tearing through the veil of darkness.
I am a video capturing a city breathing through ash,
an image distilling terror,
a voice gasping: “I am alive… I am here.”

I am a time machine no tyrant can possess,
open for all to see.
But is truth ever fixed,
when it is as fragile as those who speak it—
those who documented their revolution
to defy the abyss of forgetting?

“Why do you document?”
they asked the witnesses and the survivors.
And they answered:
A cry against oblivion.
A testimony before the world.
A mirror reflecting the unimaginable
in the face of the possible.

But documentation was more than a cry—
it was a quiet hope
that pain might one day bear justice,
that what was crushed today
would not vanish into the void of tomorrow.

I am the archive.
I do not merely preserve the past;
I carry a promise—
that the mothers who wrote farewell letters,
the children who painted the sky beneath falling bombs,
the elders who told the stories of Homs
will not disappear into the corners of oblivion.
They will not be swallowed by silence.

I am not a repository of yesterday’s remains—
I am the beginning of what is possible,
a space where the narrative is reclaimed,
where justice is reborn
from the wombs of pain.

This text was written prior to February 2025 and is part of the dossier “Eternity Unwoven,” curated by Veronica Ferreri and Inana Othman.

The dossier is a collaboration of Archivwar with Untoldmag and Arabpop. Its Italian version is available in Arabpop Vol. 8 “Cose” (Arabpop logo)

Graphic project: Greg Olla

The publisher remains available to rights holders regarding any images for which it was not possible to identify or contact the owners.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Resarch and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101064513 “ARCHIVWAR – Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria.” 

Funded by the European Union. Views and options expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Execute Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The post Our time is tomorrow appeared first on Untold.

جنة جنة جنة يا وطنا [Paradise, Paradise, Our Country is Paradise] 

Words and the relentless music penetrate my body, inebriated and exhausted as it rests on a sofa of a semi-stranger, with the only bond we share being Syria. Night eventually descends in summery Berlin, while I am listening countless times to the song Janna Janna remixed by the Syrian-German band Shkoon.

Its beginning and end dissolve into a flow of sounds, words and beats. Darkness reaches the palm frond framing the window, its slow motion devouring every single object of that unfamiliar living room. The night is untamed, almost ruthless, in its carnivorous mission, ingesting my own body and mind, too, until now occupied by the crescendo of the synths and the pounding of the beat. The entire space and myself, the past and the present, dissipate profanely and profoundly.  

***

May 2021, Berlin, a desk

It was not the first time I listened to this song, even to this specific remixed version. As happened to a lot of the traditional musical repertoire, the piece was reinvented with new meanings in March 2011 and became the soundtrack of this historical period, the revolution, after protests sparked in Syria. The song, also, became tied to one of its uncontested icons, Abdul Baset al-Sarout, a young prominent football goalkeeper who had embraced the revolution and led the protests in Homs with his words and presence. He later turned into a Free Syrian Army fighter in the wake of the brutal repression and siege laid down by the al-Assad regime in his hometown, a transformation captured by the documentary Return to Homs by filmmaker Talal Derki. The song and its infinite re-interpretations also became the sonic landmark of my nightlife in the German capital, since my arrival in May 2018. I witnessed its innumerable metamorphosis–that did not scratch its sacred power–in the many Arab parties populating pre-pandemic Berlin. 

***

February 2019, Berlin, a nightclub

An unremarkable winter night. An electro dabke version of the song instigates a powerful energy reverberating on the dancefloor. Squeezed next to each other, partygoers are greeting each other, some others dancing and drinking, others simply chatting. The moment this song starts, this heterogeneous group becomes a single entity. My friend Azad, standing next to me, is also infected by the song and the atmosphere. He starts to shout, singing along. Holding my hand, he initiates a spontaneous dabke line where I follow his voice and body. We ignore the heat, the lack of space and oxygen; we dance, sneaking around single dancers, trying to find an empty spot for our next steps amongst the other chains of people whose hands clasp together. The song is replayed immediately, the energy still inhabiting the room with force as sweating bodies and loud voices continue to move and sing in unison. 

I did not reflect much in that moment about what was happening –as similar to other such moments punctuating my nocturnal life. I just danced, I let myself be carried away by the sound and the vibe. There was no time, space and, even, willingness to dissect the power of the song as it was all about living in the moment, savouring its addictive and hedonistic flavour like an animal starving in the middle of a dying forest. Maybe those moments on the dancefloor were just so cathartic because they were about holding onto something beautiful that was about to end or it had already ended but we were not ready to let go. 

Revolutions never last for an eternity, nor should they. Yet, those moments of pure magic can survive, or we want (we need) them to survive, not to fall down, collapse forever–and us–with them. They always remind me of Eugenio Montale’s poem, I Limoni [The Lemon Trees], his wandering in a noisy city made of cement punctuated by a moment of pure beauty as he suddenly glimpses a lemon tree hidden in the courtyard of a building. Maybe the revolution had the smell of the lemons Montale was desperately seeking, that ultimate treasure that life, the world, and nature can offer to ordinary people. Maybe the paradise–Janna Janna–was Montale’s lemon trees. 

***

October 2022, Berlin, an old kneipe

For Azad, –the friend who held my hand in captivity dancing dabke that night– the song is an allegory of his revolutionary past. Three years after that night; a lifetime after the revolution, we talk about my ideas behind this text. He smiles at me and his partner, with a hint of bitterness, saying that he forgot about that night, but he remembers the song as part of his young self reaching the square to protest, dance, listen to Janna Janna and to fulfill the promise of a different future for Syria. His enduring attempts always failed as the regime’s snipers and their bullets were always faster in dropping the curtains at these rebellious gatherings and claiming some people’s lives in the process. 

***

August 2015, Lebanon, a school courtyard

For me, that dabke reminds me of those evenings spent in the courtyard of the school in the midst of agricultural fields. Created by the Syrian community displaced from rural Homs, the school and its courtyard–situated not far from its informal settlement – became the stage for any sort of event that required a sahra [party]: celebration of an engagement, a wedding or just ordinary life. The singer with his voice and the musician with his electric piano animate those dark nights and their summer breeze amusing the usual crowd while guests arrive from far and not so far away. 

Sometimes, we just listen to his singing, making up impromptu celebratory or ironic lyrics about one of us. Other times, the electro dabke pushes us in the middle of the courtyard/dancefloor as circles of men and women, sometimes mixed, dance not far from children playing around. The atmosphere is not always joyful, nostalgia and melancholia arise amongst a tensed silent audience as his voice recalls the past and what has been lost. 

There was no revolutionary fervor in those summer evenings. Janna Janna and all the other revolutionary songs never made it to the courtyard –to be honest, the revolution seemed to have become a chimera by the time of my arrival in August 2014. Sarout was never mentioned there either. Yet, those moments also were revolutionary in their own essence: they were celebrating the ‘minor struggles’ to be alive and continue to live despite displacement and the devastation of the war. 

***

Berlin, October 2024, a bed

The dancefloor was neither the street nor the courtyard. Yet, Berlin 2019 managed to bring Syria 2011 and Lebanon 2015 back as if we were inside a half-broken TV from the nineties, in which, from time to time, one channel blended with another one –as if time and space collapse making it impossible to distinguish what we were doing, with whom, where and when. The dancefloor, after all, was just a vacuum that helped everyone postpone a sense of an ending and a future repeating an eternal past. After all, this was Berlin, it was not Sarout singing, it was only a remix. Like my friend, I also danced the night away. But that waning dusk on the sofa was different. It was not a time of reckoning the end, but a time of remembering its beginning.  

***

August 2012, London, a crowd, the Syrian embassy

Another Saturday afternoon in front of the Syrian embassy in the most imperial looking parts of Central London. ‘Janna Janna’ is filling the air of those revolutionary protests: we are not Syria, but Syria and the revolution are here. For the young and older generations of Syrians protesting from a distance, this is a moment of hope, euphoria, togetherness until then unimaginable, as fear and silence brought from Syria were carefully cultivated and generationally transmitted even in the diaspora.

I was happy to touch again those moments that were, so far, buried by the passing of time. Yet, they felt more distant than ever, belonging to a parallel universe that crashed in front of the violent reality. 

***

June 2019, Berlin, a computer screen

A week after me lying on that sofa,Sarout died after being wounded in battle between Hama and Idlib. My Facebook newsfeed becomes a reel of mourning for this man and his legacy: the video of him singing during the protests, his interviews and pictures of the funeral attended by thousands of people in Idlib. In Lebanon, members of the Syrian community I lived with commemorated his death, abandoning their usual carefulness in posting anything political and revolutionary at their own very real risk. In Berlin too, the news feels devastating––he was a symbol of the revolution, but almost an embodiment of the Syrian predicament and its contradictions. His death feels like a kitchen knife cutting deeply through the skin and flesh of a finger.

***

November 2024, Berlin

We are no longer on a dancefloor, its darkness and the darkness of the night did not protect us from the reckoning of this bitter end; there weren’t any lemon trees to uncover in any hidden corner. Like the TV of my childhood where white, black and grey lines dominated the screen, eating up one channel and the intrusive other, the feelings, people, years and places belonging to the revolution became mixed up with neither beginning nor end. A dream I did not live but watched in front of a broken TV showcasing fragments of my diaries, fieldnotes and memories. Maybe I can only archive these fragments, making some order and clarity in between these monochromatic lines as a final act of mourning, or as a way to deal with the lingering melancholia. I put a date, a place, I unpack and deconstruct the secret beauty of a lemon tree, the captivating lyrics of Janna Janna, reminding myself that even revolutionary icons like Sarout are human.

***

 7th December 2024, Berlin, Sonneallee/Arab Street,

I am walking towards Sonneallee to catch the bus to go home and watch the speech of Bashar al-Assad that never happened. My friend Nawal and I are stopped by a young boy standing in front of one of the many Syrian patisseries that found their homes in this long avenue. Wearing the Syrian revolutionary flag like the mantle of a superhero, he stands next to an old stereo singing Janna Janna, offering sweets to people passing by to celebrate the imminent fall of Bashar al-Assad. The revolutionary flag reappears in a blink of an eye, worn like an accessory by men walking in the street or attached to the Keffiyeh and the Palestinian flag at the entrance of many shops. 

The day after, even Sarout reappears in flags and posters brought by the jubilant crowd celebrating the collapse of the regime and its eternal aura. I smell again the lemon tree as Janna Janna is blasted in the middle of Kreuzberg, almost symbolizing this surreal moment of touching paradise with the point of that finger, effortlessly, at least for the here and now.

I do not know what to do with this text now that it tells a different ending written only in November from the one we witnessed more recently. I want to delete that part, but I can’t. I am tempted to rewind the tape, letting the interferences in the screen just be what they have been, without any order or logic, to preserve that revolutionary momentum as it was, as it is now, and with it, those who are not here with us, celebrating the many ways in which they also contributed to make the unimaginable and unforeseeable become history. 

This text was written prior to February 2025 and is part of the dossier “Eternity Unwoven,” curated by Veronica Ferreri and Inana Othman.

The dossier is a collaboration of Archivwar with Untoldmag and Arabpop. Its Italian version is available in Arabpop Vol. 8 “Cose” (Arabpop logo)

Graphic project: Greg Olla

The publisher remains available to rights holders regarding any images for which it was not possible to identify or contact the owners.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Resarch and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101064513 “ARCHIVWAR – Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria.” 

Funded by the European Union. Views and options expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Execute Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

The post Paradise, interrupted. The archive may not end appeared first on Untold.

On Saturday evening, agitated youths tore down the statue of Hafez al-Assad in President’s Square in Jaramana, the town where I live. Around 4:30 p.m., as soon as I heard the news, I quickly got dressed and asked my neighbor if I could leave my little puppy, Mishmish, with him. He said he would come with me too. I dashed down the stairs at full speed and waited at the corner of the street for over five minutes, feeling time slip away. Impatient, I called him urgently, and he finally came down. My strides were long, and he had to run to keep up with me. When we reached the square, a large crowd of youths had gathered. Hafez al-Assad’s head lay toppled, thrown to the right side of the square. The youths had climbed onto several pictures of Bashar al-Assad, ripping them apart with their hands and feet. Their chants echoed in the air: “Syria belongs to us, not to the Assad family!”

I felt a mixture of overwhelming happiness, tinged with fear and tension. Jaramana is not my hometown, and I didn’t see any friends or acquaintances, so I chose not to join the movement, instead observing the unfolding events with caution. Hundreds of people stood along the sidewalks, their faces reflecting a blend of joy, fear, and anticipation as they witnessed an unprecedented moment in the town.

As time went on, it became clear that the fear of the regime and its oppressive machinery was beginning to dissipate among the people. Information spread, confirming the withdrawal of security detachments and police forces. This fueled a sense of liberation, as people celebrated their freedom from captivity.

The entry of troops into the vicinity of Damascus signaled that the regime’s collapse was inevitable. Yet, the delay in its fall since 2013 had left me hesitant to fully embrace this belief. 

The rapid flow of news about the withdrawal from the southern cities and Quneitra was enough to confirm that I was witnessing a scenario beyond imagination, surpassing even my wildest expectations: Assad was on his way to leave Syria for the last time, perhaps heading to another country.

Since 2011, I have been living in a constant state of fear. I hadn’t left the country, and I was deeply worried about the possibility of foreign intervention, the defeat of the factions before reaching Hama, and losing the opportunity for change in Syria. Without change, I feared the multiplication of crises: division, sectarian conflict, poverty, and more.

What I feared most began to materialize in 2013, with the widespread militarization, followed by America and its international coalition’s intervention to fight terrorism in 2014. Then, in 2015, Russia entered the war to help the regime reclaim towns, working in coordination with Turkey and Iran. The entry of troops into the vicinity of Damascus signaled that the regime’s collapse was inevitable. Yet, the delay in its fall since 2013 had left me hesitant to fully embrace this belief. I feared the regime might once again find a way to survive, with regional or international backing. Perhaps it could secure new alliances, trade critical intelligence about jihadist organizations, or benefit from some unexpected event that would delay its collapse once more.

Despite my intense fear, I wrote articles for newspapers without making any concessions to the regime. I believed that its departure was the key to opening the door for profound change in Syria. However, I carefully crafted my texts with phrases that would avoid provoking the security services, hoping to minimize the risk of being arrested and dying for nothing. I would routinely delete messages exchanged with friends on social media or WhatsApp, and I urged others to do the same, fearing that my mobile phone might fall into the hands of the security apparatus.

When I posted content containing radical criticism or direct language, many friends, both inside and outside the country, would urge me to delete it. They believed it was better to wait rather than risk being arrested. These warnings would terrify me temporarily, but I always returned to writing. This was the life I led from 2011 until the moment the regime finally fell, at dawn on Saturday 8 December 2024.

An hour after the fall, I received a phone call from my friend, telling me I had only a few minutes to come down so we could go together to Umayyad Square. Half asleep, I don’t even remember how I got dressed. I tried to call my neighbor to leave Mishmish with him, but he was already awake—no one in Syria was asleep.

I had gone to bed around three, only to wake up around six. The darkness of the night still lingered. I left Mishmish and rushed down the stairs, practically leaping. In front of my house, I met my friend, and we ran toward the cars. I shouted, “We are done, guys, freedom for Syria!”

While we were at the peak of joy, one of the young men told us that Israel had advanced in Quneitra and occupied Mount Hermon. It was a sad blow, almost killing the joy inside me. But I thought that the fall of the tyrant would help reclaim the land, and the most important thing now was to end this nightmare.

We piled into the cars, which were packed so tightly that we could barely find a spot for ourselves. As we drove, we listened to Sarout’s songs and other revolutionary anthems from 2011 and 2012, while discussing the long-awaited fall of the regime, cursing the president and his father for what they had done to the country—handing it over to foreign powers, bringing occupations, all to hold onto power forever.

There were three cars in total: two from Sweida and one from Damascus. Among us were young men wanted by the regime since 2011, who hadn’t set foot in Damascus since, despite living no more than 100 kilometers away. I, too, had not visited my city, Homs, since 2012, and had not seen my nephews, now aged eleven, nine, and four.

The cars kept pouring in, one after the other, from Jaramana, then Bab Touma, then Baghdad Street, and other areas, until we finally reached Umayyad Square. We were among the first to arrive. The sun was just beginning to rise. The joy, laughter, photos, and celebratory gunfire grew louder. Groups of people were steadily increasing, but not in large numbers. The square wasn’t full, and there was no public speech. As more cars carrying fighters from Sweida, Daraa, and Western Ghouta arrived, they fired even more bullets into the air, celebrating the fall of the tyrant and his family’s rule.

We circled the square, taking photos, broadcasting live, sending victory signs, and singing, “Syria is ours, not for the Assad family,” “Long live Syria, down with Assad.” I corrected someone, saying, “Long live Syria, Assad is down.”

While we were at the peak of joy, one of the young men told us that Israel had advanced in Quneitra and occupied Mount Hermon. It was a sad blow, almost killing the joy inside me. But I thought that the fall of the tyrant would help reclaim the land, and the most important thing now was to end this nightmare.

It soon became clear that we were facing significant problems. The signs appeared immediately, as we began to notice thefts from the military buildings surrounding the square, from the Opera House, and reports of Israel occupying new areas. When we decided to leave around ten in the morning, we discovered that someone had stolen many items and around two million Syrian pounds from a friend’s car. It was deeply disturbing.

We were then told that the detainees would be released at Abbasid Square, so we went there immediately, hoping to witness this historic moment. After waiting for about half an hour, we received the news that the detainees had been released randomly from the security branches and Sednaya prison, but we didn’t see any of them. We then got into the cars and headed back to Jaramana, on a day filled with pure happiness.

My friend, Rania Mustafa, the leftist political writer, who had been in Damascus since 2012, would have made it a million times harder for me to stay if she hadn’t been there. Even though several days had passed, she still looked at me with anger. How could I not have told her to go with me to Umayyad Square, a place Syrians had longed to reach since 2011, where hundreds of martyrs had fallen trying to make it possible? I feel like I “betrayed” her, even though it was merely a coincidence and a result of my haste, as these were my last moments under the family’s rule.

The post On the realization of fantasy appeared first on Untold.

On one screen runs the narrative of a Syrian popular uprising brutally repressed at the expense of its mutation into a festering internecine and proxy conflict. One punctuated by untold massacres, collective punishment, urbicide and the exodus of millions of Syrians—a dislocation in the social fabric that will take generations to repair (if ever). A conflict that had (until very recently) seemingly resolved itself into a pyrrhic victory for the Assad regime which survives on the carcass of a failed state: its territory in fragments, its economy in ruins, and its society demolished.

In this narrative, Hezbollah – Hassan Nasrallah in the foreground, its fighters and broader community of supporters in the background – is undoubtedly one of the major perpetrators of this carnage. Its unequivocal support of Assad as it bulldozed through Syria’s rebellious villages, towns, and communities was a necessary condition for the survival of the Assad regime – perhaps only slightly eclipsed by the direct Russian intervention from 2015 onwards. The direct role that Hezbollah fighters played in the brutal warfare unleashed by Assad – most vividly in al-Qusayr and in the starvation siege of Madaya and Zabadani and the subsequent massacres of civilians, population transfer and the sectarian register in which they were coded – and the infamous baklava celebrations of Hezbollah supporters of that role is impossible to bracket out.

Nasrallah in this screen stands, beside Assad perhaps, drenched in Syrian blood and imperious in his small victory over a decapitated and starved society. Many, myself included – whether directly or indirectly brutalized by Hezbollah’s fighting arm – will have watched elements of this narrative race through their minds as the news broke of Nasrallah’s assassination. Some will have even celebrated Nasrallah’s ignominious end with baklava—is there anything more blood-curdling than this resignification of traditional social practices around food for our era of massacres? The most vulgar of such celebrations very quickly blended into broader narratives of hatred and schadenfreude, whether sectarian (anti-Shia) or chauvinistic (anti-Lebanese).

What is conspicuous in its absence from that narrative, of course, is the assassin.

On that second screen, is the immediate and ongoing narrative of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and beyond. A war in which we watch, blow by blow, a 21st century military unleash its vengeance on an impoverished but impudent ghetto, leaving a landscape of annihilation in its wake (whenever that might be) – truly, the stuff of genocidal colonialist nightmares as Ghassan Hage put it. A genocide perpetrated under the watchful and approving gaze of the United States, the global hegemon, and made possible only through its political, legal, and cultural shields as much as through its weapons arsenal. A narrative where the history of Israel’s emergence out of the colonial subjugation of our region, and its own colonial expansion hitherto, bleed into its attempt today to use this moment of total impunity to obliterate any resistance to its regional hegemony once and for all.

Hezbollah, in this narrative, and particularly under the leadership of Nasrallah, is undoubtedly one of the very few genuine thorns in the side of the Israeli war machine. Hezbollah’s fighters forced Israel’s withdrawal from occupied south Lebanon in 2000, and fought its combined army, navy and airforce to a standstill in 2006 at great cost to them and their families’ lives. These were unprecedented moments relative to the collective humiliation and traumatic military histories of the regular armies of Arab states (in particular, Egypt and Syria, whether in 1948, 1967 or even 1973).

Nasrallah in this second screen stands unquestionably as the face of this defiance to the colonial carnage of Israel and the concrete negation of its invulnerability. Famously telling the inhabitants of Beirut, in the midst of the 2006 July war, to look outside their windows out into the sea and watch the Israeli navy’s flagship, INS Hanit, that had been bombarding the city relentlessly, as it burns.

Many, myself included, will have seen Nasrallah’s martyrdom – coming on the heels of an unrelenting genocide in Gaza, and signaling the intensification of the urbicide of Lebanon’s south, Bekaa, and Beirut’s southern suburbs – as a crushing blow for regional anti-colonial struggles at a moment of great peril. Some will have mourned him as an epoch-defining leader of Arab stature – as a Nasser, or an even more successful Nasser – in the cause of Arab resistance to, and liberation from, Israeli colonialism. The most vulgar of such outpours of mourning quickly blended into blanket silencing of the Syrian catastrophe in this narrative, and even tried to turn its wrath on Syrian refugees in Lebanon as immediate scapegoats.

Narratives as antagonisms

If you are to look at these two screens then a simple superimposition of one over the other, or of watching them simultaneously, is a practical impossibility. One is reduced to oscillating between these two projections in real time, producing a sort of existential nausea, intellectual muteness, and political paralysis – one is in effect reduced to the simple act of sobbing uncontrollably. The tension at the heart of the act of conjuring these two screens is beyond any cognitive dissonance that they provoke, or the contradictory reality that they describe – indeed, reality per se is not contradictory, it is what it is, as the smoking ruins of Gaza, Beirut and Madaya demonstrate. The unbearable tension is at the level of where one is positioned and fixed in relation to these two narratives.

Stripped to their bare skeletons — and without suggesting an equivalence at the level of their content — the two narratives describe two ineradicable and homologous antagonisms:

a)   an antagonism vis-à-vis Assad’s authoritarian regime, and particularly its rule-of-violence [1] since 2011 and the broader (regional and international) coercive apparatus propping up that rule and where Hezbollah features prominently.

b)   an antagonism vis-à-vis Israel’s colonial regime, and particularly its genocidal rule since October 2023, and the broader colonial structure that props it up centered on the US.

The logic of these two antagonisms is as inescapable, as brutal and as nuanced as the barrel bombs and the bunker busters that punctuate and reproduce them on a daily basis. By themselves, the two antagonisms do not need to be contradictory. However, where Hezbollah is concerned, the logics of these two antagonisms interpellate you simultaneously into two contradictory and completely incompatible subject positions:

B places you behind Nasrallah loading his gun, while A stations you in front of him staring at the barrel of that gun.

That is the unbearable tension one feels: the sensation of being torn asunder by these two subject positions.

Now, an analytical redescription as the above is helpful insofar as understanding the quasi-impossibility of making sense of these two antagonisms together or simply next to each other. This, I would argue, can be extended (in different intensities) to any number of cleavages that structure our current Mashreqi, Arab, WANA moment — criss-crossing axes of class, gender, religion, ethnicity, nation, etc. However, to move beyond the political paralysis, we need to come up with a larger screen that can combine these two (and many other) antagonisms in some coherent relationship.

Resolving contradictory antagonisms

I suggest that there are at least two analytically distinct and dominant models that have attempted to provide a way out of this conundrum [2]. Both of which, I would argue, are not only analytically deficient but have also wreaked havoc in our region through the political projects they prescribed:

The first tells us that it is simple. It proposes an essentialist understanding of antagonism: a simple, clear and static cleavage — an opposition to a central node — that can a priori determine and subsume all other antagonisms and cleavages (a form of “in-the-last-instance analysis”). Such essentialist understanding of antagonism can be as broadly conceived as (vulgar) forms of anti-imperialism (where the central antagonism is vis-à-vis the US empire and all other phenomena are an “effect” of that antagonism) or as narrowly as the Syrian antagonism vis-à-vis the Assad regime. In its normative disposition (if not necessarily in praxis) it can be as emancipatory, humanist, and progressive as anti-imperialism or as conservative, anti-humanist, and reactionary as Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations.

Such a conception admits no space for contradictions in the first place — and thus admits no space for the very possibility of politics — in favor of facile inferences from that ur-antagonism. Indeed, its political projects — built as they are solely through a narrow logic of opposition to that central node (US empire, Assad regime) — are unable/unwilling to integrate and articulate struggles that do not fully assimilate into that logic, and are thus emptied of any positive content of their own so as to become meaningless. The empty container of the political arm of Syrian revolution is a case in point [3]; or, indeed, an anti-imperialism that is reduced to the defense of a revanchist, ultra-nationalist and reactionary Russian regime.

The second tells us that it’s complicated. It proposes a pluralist understanding of antagonism; an endless multiplication of such antagonisms but eschewing any hierarchy between them, or any normative discrimination (Shia-Sunni, Arab-Kurd, Palestinian-Israeli: all are potentially equally legitimate and equally flattened). Uninterested and unwilling to engage in the interrogation of their interrelations, it also forgoes any question of determination or causality between them. At its best, it is no more than a descriptive catalogue of many different antagonisms without prescribing a project to navigate them. At its worst, and in its concrete political manifestations in our region, it tends towards narrow and opportunistic political projects of the day (anti-Iran today, anti-Shia, anti-fundamentalism, anti-Saddam Hussein, etc…)

Reconstructing contradictory antagonisms

What is needed is a very different sort of screen. One that allows us to see these different antagonisms and to recognise the conditions in which they become contradictory. In essence, what is needed is a screen that opens up — rather than foreclosing — the possibility of reconstructing these different antagonisms (through political and analytical work) within a progressive project.

Needless to say, there is not one simple answer to this — even for a seemingly rudimentary system with two pared-down antagonisms as the two described here. But I would venture a number of (very broad) working principles — hardly comprehensive nor sufficient, a mere starting point — in how we might go about it.

• The colonial context of the region — in its historical formations, their legacies, as well as their multiple contemporary manifestations, uneven and contradictory as they are — is a necessary starting point for any such effort. It was, and remains, the single most detrimental factor in structuring, maintaining, and reproducing seemingly never-ending cleavages along national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other fault lines. Without taking into account that context, it would be impossible to understand how and why we are continuously compelled to stand in these interminably contradictory subject positions. But it can only ever be a starting point. For, colonial hegemony, by itself, cannot determine the content nor outcomes of these antagonisms that proliferate in its wake, nor does it determine how they are articulated relative to each other in specific moments [4]. Colonial legacies and interests can help draw the outlines of the political and ideological (e.g., sectarian, national, regional) structures in which the strategies of the Assad regime and the anti-Assad opposition in the Syrian uprising were/are enacted. However, these structures do not (on their own) determine the strategies themselves, the alliances that are forged, how they are coded (and/or decoded) ideologically, and how they are (dis)articulated with/from other struggles (e.g., Kurdish struggle for autonomy or independence; Palestinian struggle for independence). These questions, among others, constitute the (relatively) open space of political work and analysis.
• The empirical answers to the questions above can help us understand and describe the array of different antagonisms that structure our politics and position us differently, i.e., by recourse to the past. But any political project that aims at transforming that state (i.e., by, inter alia, rearranging, reinterpreting, and re-articulating these antagonisms) needs a future temporality. That is to say, a future-oriented political vision that guides us in the political work of the present, in constructing relations between these different antagonisms and struggles in ways that can move us closer to that future. This, of course, opens up a panoply of difficult questions around immediate tactics and future-oriented strategies. But all in function of some sort of an answer to the question: where do we want to be in 20 years?
• Any such future-oriented project, I believe, requires a radical, concerted and consistent re-alignment of our scope of thinking and action to encompass the whole region again. The postcolonial nation-state system of the region (and the Mashreq in particular, in all its different permutations) has failed to deliver either stability, security or prosperity for the vast majority of the region’s peoples – in effect, its only rationale has been to buttress the political elites of these different polities and fragment any opposition to (neo)colonial hegemony.

The decade of uprisings from 2011 as a moment of dislocation is instructive in this regard. Even if the uprisings did not directly and explicitly challenge the foundation of that nation-state system, their cascading dynamics, repertoires of contention, and transnational solidarities implicitly did. In response, the counter-revolutionary reaction has been one long attempt to invariably re-nationalise the crises of 2011 (ironically, only possible through a network of repression that is itself transnational).

Such a realignment also opens up difficult but necessary questions: What is “the region”? How do we blur the hardened material and discursive boundaries of what we understand as “the region” (within and without) whether at the level of geography or identity? How do we re-imagine broader collective political identities that do not erase the specificities of their constituent, and necessarily plural, national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other identities? Who sits outside of these collective formations, and what are their logics of inclusion and exclusion? How can we re-imagine notions of collective living and political organising on the basis of such broader and blurred lines — what forms of sovereignties, states, communities, emerge out of this?

***

The outcome is not a contrived framework where these antagonisms can be explained away, but rather a condition in which they are actively naturalised as co-determining to each other. So that a struggle against Assad’s violence comes to presuppose and to prescribe a struggle against Israel’s genocide and vice versa.

It needs to be stressed that such outcomes are not a forgone/objective/natural conclusion. There is no reason why the antagonism first outlined in the early months of the Syrian uprisings should find itself 13 years later in an impossible impasse vis-a-vis the anti-colonial struggle against Israeli genocide. It is the result of concrete choices and alliances, of the construction of dominant discourses and narratives by actors within the movement and by its enemies (including sections of the anti-imperialist left, lest we forget). Nor is it a question that we can afford to ignore. Is there any doubt about the deleterious effect that the embrace of Assad by a variety of anti-imperialist groups, and regional anti-colonial actors had on the trajectory of the Syrian uprising? Or about the disastrous impact that the current sidelining and demobilisation of Syria as a regional actor and its exhausted and fragmented populace, has had on the prospects of regional resistance to Israeli hegemony?

Constructing a relationship of co-determination between different (and thus, relatively autonomous) struggles requires both the intellectual work to understand, analyse, critique and theorize (and by definition, to listen), and the groundwork to establish the modalities, movements, spaces, and conditions through which that co-determination becomes a natural outcome. A critical understanding, for instance, of the deep embeddedness of Assad’s brutal repression within a broader colonial/civilisational discourse and modalities of the “war on terror” (in its most islamophobic and urbicidal renditions) can help us begin to re-articulate resistance to that logic as a shared project. A critical understanding of sectarian antagonisms and how they are mobilised to stand for debased political identities in different contexts can also help us complicate the sectarian cleavages that undercut both the opposition to the Assad regime and the resistance axis, and to begin the necessary work of re-articulating both these projects. A critical understanding of the concurrent struggles within different regional contexts (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Egypt and beyond; around issues from gender rights, to social, political and cultural rights) and how they interact with these actors’ regional politics, can help us begin a process of re-articulating diverse struggles together in ways that go beyond narrow and short-term opportunistic alliances and/or regressive political logics (e.g., jingoism, sectarianism).

This is not to pretend that it is a simple process, nor to suggest that there are any guarantees for any eventual success — for we are struggling with structures and actors whose very existence rests on denying such conditions, and on creating conditions in which these articulations are a theoretical as well as a practical impossibility.

***

Addendum

In the days since I finished writing this text, the empty husk of the Assad regime finally imploded in response to one well-timed blow from the Islamist rebels forces in Idlib — after a 54-year reign of iron and blood. It is patently clear that this implosion is in no small part a consequence (and a clear signal) of the near-fatal blow received by Hezbollah over the past months and the weakening of Iran’s axis in the region. It remains far too early to ascertain the nature and prospects of the new regime in Damascus. In the best case scenario (i.e., barring further conflict and chaos) whatever Syrian state emerges from the rubble will face an uphill battle to establish any semblance of sovereignty or autonomy: its civic infrastructure in tatters, its economy broken, its political class inexistent, and its military hollowed out (indeed, essentially demilitarised by a triumphant and raging Israel). It will be completely dependent on international and regional deep pockets for reconstruction, and on neighbouring countries’ “goodwill” for its security for the foreseeable future. Its political orientation will be deeply inflected by these demands: i.e. moving primarily within the strategic orbit of a Turkish-Qatari axis (and thus creating a direct frontier between this axis and Israel), while Saudi Arabia and other regional and international actors would compete for a secondary position.

This profound dislocation entails a new proposition in terms of the strategic map of the region as well as new and emerging questions that we have to contend with. The project of Syria’s reconstruction and of rebuilding its economic, political, and civic institutions (not to mention mending its broken social fabric) will be the most immediate and most important space of contestation. Early signs indicate that Syria’s direction will be buttressed by a power bloc of socially conservative and economically (neo)liberal forces. The first and immediate challenge then will be to organise and enlarge the political space in which other forces in society can participate in and influence this project and resist its most pernicious tendencies. Our work there has to also articulate emerging (strategic) questions that will have to be asked at a regional level once the dust settles on the longtail aftermath of October 7. Where does the emerging Turkey-Qatar axis sit vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinian question? What tools can we start developing within this new context to contain Israel’s impunity and to re-articulate a new regional resistance paradigm in the face of its genocidal ethno-nationalist paradigm?

In other words, how can we arrive at a condition in which a struggle for a democratic, inclusive and open Syrian polity and society comes to presuppose and to prescribe a struggle against Israel’s genocidal ethno-nationalism and vice versa.

Acknowledgments:

This essay originates in a number of recent short interactions with the always thoughtful, if ever provocative, friend Amr Saed Eddin. I am also grateful to friends and colleagues, Benjamin De Cleen, Enrico De Angelis, and Rasha Chatta for their generous feedback and contributions to the reflections here.

Notes: 

[1] See, Salwa Ismail, 2018, Rule of Violence. Cambridge University Press.

[2] I am following here Stuart Hall’s heuristic in critiquing dominant understandings, at the time, of class and race in colonial societies which also closely correspond to (particularly as political strategies) what Laclau and Mouffe later identify as “logics of equivalence and difference”. See, Stuart Hall, 1980, Race, articulation and societies structured in dominance; Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe, 1985, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.

[3] The memoires of Bourhan Ghalioun, the first president of the Syrian National Council, is a good indicator of both the unimaginative rigidity as well as emptiness of the political organs that represented the Syrian opposition including the SNC, the Syrian Coalition and the Coordination Committee. See, برهان غليون، ٢٠١٩، عطب الذات: وقائع ثورة لم تكتمل. الشبكة العربية للأبحاث والنشر، بيروت.

[4] An (admittedly imperfect) analogy is to consider Hall’s inversion of “economic determinancy” over ideology into one that operates “in the first instance” rather than “in the last instance”: “The economic provides the repertoire of categories which will be used, in thought. What the economic cannot do is (a) to provide the contents of the particular thoughts of particular social classes or groups at any specific time; (b) to fix or guarantee for all time which ideas will be made use of by which classes. The determinancy of the economic for the ideological can, therefore, be only in terms of the former setting the limits for defining the terrain of operations, establishing the ‘raw materials’ of thought.” See, Stuart Hall, 1986, The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees, Journal of Communication Inquiry, 10(2).

The post Nasrallah, Syria and Palestine: Thinking beyond the narratives that speak us appeared first on Untold.

The post The hierarchy of the dispossessed: A short comic appeared first on Untold.

There is a growing consensus that our society is experiencing substantial changes. Over the past two decades, processes of exclusion and necropolitical governance, which involve the further destruction of nature and society, have intensified. This has led to a pervasive sense of insecurity, uncertainty, and fear in our increasingly unjust world. The rise of far-right governments and movements, as well as the expansion of the logic of war in everyday life, pose global threats in response to increasing social panic.

Indeed, we are witnessing an authoritarian shift that is not limited to autocratic contexts but is a fundamental aspect of global governance. This is evident in the ongoing repression against anti-war and pro-Palestinian protests—nevertheless, the processes began a few years ago. At the same time, massive anti-authoritarian and anti-colonial movements, revolutions, and autonomous politics have been emerging in marginalized neighbourhoods and territories all over the world. Despite facing violent repression, these movements continue to be crucial in shaping the present and possible futures.

Bayat, a leading scholar of revolutions and social movements, particularly in the Middle East, elaborates on the defining features of the new revolutionary movements and draws comparisons with twentieth-century revolutions.

Farvardin: Professor Bayat, you have always been a dedicated and passionate researcher and observer of revolutions and (non-) movements, particularly those in the Middle East, over the past 45 years. You have traced their commonalities and differences to develop a more comprehensive and convincing analysis of social transformation and upheaval. In your book Revolution without Revolutionaries, you compared two revolutionary episodes from the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. You examined the 1979 revolution in Iran and the early twenty-first-century revolutions, specifically the initial phase of the Arab Spring. You argued that these two periods differ significantly, particularly in terms of ideology and visions. You contended that the latter lacked the radicalism seen in the former episode. Can you discuss this further, particularly your argument about their differences in ideology?

Bayat: Anybody who studies contentious politics acknowledges that the past decade, the 2010s, had arguably the most active periods (in terms of the volume and intensity of popular struggles) in recent history at the global level, which began with the unfolding of the Arab Spring revolutions.

I have been interested in the idea of revolution and its practices since my youth, particularly the 1979 revolution in Iran, in which I partially participated and then studied. When I looked at the Arab Spring and the episodes in the 2010s in general, I realized a significant difference between these two episodes. It is important to note that I had been living in the Middle East, Egypt in particular, for a long time before its 2011 revolution.

The Arab Spring, in terms of modes of mobilization, the spread and the extent of it, was quite remarkable. It began in one country, Tunisia, and then spread almost all over the Arab world. Its numbers, massive participants, and rapid diffusion were truly spectacular. It kind of worked against the previously popular understanding of the revolution as a rare entity, as something that very hardly happens. But, in the past decade, it was never rare — it was as if it were occurring everywhere. A BBC leftist journalist Paul Mason wrote a book about it earlier on called, Why It’s Still Kicking off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions.

I believe there have been significant differences between the revolutions of the twentieth century and what I call the “new generation of the twenty-first-century revolutions”. Firstly, the new generation of revolutions has been remarkably rich and spectacular in terms of mobilization, but depressingly poor in bringing about meaningful change at the state level, in terms of transforming the elites and the state institutions in a democratic direction. Secondly, these revolutions, by and large, cried for and lacked the kind of organization and leadership that the twentieth-century revolutions had. So, these new revolutions didn’t have leaders like we had in the twentieth century revolutions, such as Ayatollah Khomeini or Václav Havel, not to mention Mandela or Gandhi. So, they were very much horizontal and connected to one another through the new communication technologies and social media platforms. And, of course, people were also connected through the various networks and non-movements on the ground.

Thirdly, these new revolutions had little intellectual precursor. Most major revolutions have had some kind of philosophy, a vision, that has inspired revolutionaries to take action in order to realize such visions. Some of these visions were utopian, very powerful and inspiring. So, the new generation of revolutions resulted from a remarkable popular mobilization, and yet mostly didn’t lead to the changes that many of the protagonists and activists had hoped for — that is, some kind of accountable government, democracy, human rights, and dignity.

Finally, these revolutions didn’t have the kind of radicalism that the earlier revolutions enjoyed, things like demands for redistribution, change in property relations, and economic justice . Of course, the masses of people were very much concerned with the issues of bread, jobs, and social justice. But I think the political classes only gave lip service to such concerns, without having a vision of how to materialize such demands. They invariably took the market rationale for granted.

Now, the question is why this was the case. How do we explain this change in the characteristics of the twenty-first-century revolutions? First, it is important to acknowledge and show that these do represent a “new generation” of revolutionary movements and uprisings. I disagree with those who think that the revolutions of the Arab Spring are a continuation of what we had before, that is, the “negotiated revolutions” of 1989 in Eastern Europe. Yes, the Eastern European experience of 1989 was of “negotiated revolutions”. But they resulted in a total transformation of those societies, ideology, the elites, the economic system, et cetera. Almost everything significantly changed. And this differentiated them from the Arab Spring revolutions whose outcome came to minimal change. The protagonists took the existing political and economic system for granted, even though they called for things such as political accountability, openness, democratization, lesser repression, human rights issues, and individual liberties. These things were indeed crucial demands and necessary. But as I said, issues of redistribution and social justice were not taken seriously. In this sense, I’m saying they were not radical compared to the earlier revolutions in the developing countries, which were strongly left-populist, socialist, anti-imperialist, distributionist, and so on.

The truth is that these new revolutions occurred at a different time in the global political culture. I have tried to explain this in my book Revolution Without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring that these revolutions happened in the post-Cold War, post-socialist, post-colonial and post-Islamist times. In the twentieth century, these strong movements — that is, socialism, anti-colonialism and radical Islamism — carried the idea of radical revolution. But by the time the Arab Spring came in 2011, these movements and the very idea of revolution as a path for fundamental change had been undermined or disappeared altogether. In fact, the 1989 anti-communist revolutions ended the idea of revolution in the way that we knew it. So, when the largely spontaneous uprisings of the Arab Spring surprised many observers, few participants had really thought a priori about the idea of revolution. Consequently, when the spectacular uprisings in the Arab world and elsewhere came to fruition, many of the protagonists were not attuned to the idea and modalities of revolution; they had not thought of how to wrest power from the existing elites and establish a new way of doing politics and conducting economics.

Farvardin: I recall that somewhere in one of your works, you also pointed out the “marketization of politics” in the twenty-first century. Indeed, what you talk about now or have argued before is a description of neoliberal subjectification, which has affected how the protagonists of the twenty-first-century revolutions have imagined, experienced, and eventually perceived their actions.

Bayat: Yes! Exactly. The post-1989 revolutions and post-Cold War period coincided with the flare-up and emergence of neoliberalism in the world. From the West, neoliberalism spread throughout the rest of the world, even though its intensity, impacts, and consequences were very different. In general, ordinary people have resisted neoliberalism in practice by, for instance, opposing privatization or temporary contracts and by reclaiming urban lands for informal construction, etc. Even if ordinary people might not necessarily understand or care much about the discourse of the laissez-faire market and the marketization of their societies, they have shown opposition to its rationale and its consequences in their everyday practices.

But neoliberalism is more than economic policies or marketization of everything. It also acts as a form of governmentality. It affects the way in which we think about the world, about how it works, what kind of change we want and the like. In this sense, I think the neoliberal governmentality had a negative impact on the oppositional political class, on the protagonists — those whose voice we hear and are visible and involved in thinking and imagining.

In other words, they took the marketization and the existing economic structure for granted. They also believed that the time for fundamental socio-economic and political transformation, or revolution, had passed. This is because the revolutions of the twentieth century had mostly failed. Consequently, they could not consider revolution as an alternative project to the existing social and political order. Nor for that matter did they ever entertain any utopian vision for the future. They were mostly stuck to the present.

But, as I have said before, no matter what we, people, think or do not think about revolution, it can happen. Revolution can happen even if people do not think about it. But having or not having ideas about revolution would have a tremendous impact on the outcome when it comes to fruition. And that explains how the protagonists had to deal with the uprisings, had to improvise, and then the uprisings emerged in many parts of the Middle East and beyond. This situation has caused a fascinating debate about the recent revolutions. Some consider this situation in positive terms. But I do not necessarily.

Farvardin: I believe it’s important to directly address the recent uprising in Iran, known as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement or the Jina uprising. You mentioned that regardless of what it’s called or perceived, a revolution may occur. I would like to highlight that, in the case of the Jina uprising, the impact of previous revolutions, such as the 1979 revolution and the Arab Spring, influenced people’s perceptions of their actions. This is why they referred to it as a “revolution” and not just a movement or uprising from the early days of the uprising. The collective memories and images of past revolutions, both positive and negative, have influenced the potential for experiencing another revolution or revolutionary movement. In one of your writings, you mentioned that the Jina uprising is a movement aimed at reclaiming life. You compared it to the first wave of Arab revolutions but refrained from calling it a revolution. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on the 2022 uprising in Iran.

Bayat: There are many points you’re raising, but because you talked about reclaiming life, let me talk about it first. This notion of “reclaiming life” is quite particular to the case of Iran, because of the particular nature of the Islamic State (velayat-e Faqih) in the Islamic Republic. It is important to see the differences in the nature of the state and the regime in power. The Iranian regime is very different from the Egyptian or Tunisian regimes before the revolutions, their state projects were different. I think that the Iranian regime, nizam-e velaii or Velâyat-e Faqih (the guardianship regime of Islamic jurists), is somehow totalitarian in the sense of controlling people’s everyday life and culture; how people behave, what they wear, what they listen to, etc. These are very basic everyday life issues, which many people of the world take for granted even under horrible dictatorships. In Iran, these are subjects and areas of politics because of the state’s strict control over them. Consequently, the Iranian regime, I mean those non-elected but powerful institutions under the Vali-ye Faqih, the Supreme Leader, is a kind of religious and military authority that tends to politicize life. So, it is not surprising that, in response, people want to free life from the diktats and control of the regime. Here is what I mean broadly by the struggle to “reclaim life”. And in this sense, I think, it is quite different from the Arab world and the revolutions of the Arab Spring.

Regarding your other point, it’s probably true what you said about the contested notion of the revolution in the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In other words, you’re suggesting that people were thinking about revolution because of their collective memory and past experiences. I would add that since Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom uprising happened ten years or so after the Arab Spring revolutions, Iranian protestors might have thought about it in those terms. But still, this does not make that uprising a revolution as such. It was, in my view, a revolutionary uprising, a revolutionary movement, but not a revolution.

In this sense, it is comparable to the Arab Spring; different segments of the population, such as workers, women, youth, farmers, ethnic minorities, etc. came together as a united entity called “the people” and mostly called for the fundamental structural transformation and regime change. This makes it revolutionary. But whereas revolutionary uprisings entailed the toppling of dictators in Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen, this was not the case in Iran. Nothing much changed at the top in Iran; it even made the regime more aggressive and disciplinary.

Farvardin: So, shall we now say, based on what you have already argued, that the 2022 Jina revolutionary uprising was, in fact, a vivid case of the emergence of “revolutionaries without revolution”? I don’t know whether you agree or not, I think there is or was a vision realized in the slogan of Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Woman, Life, Freedom) in the Jina uprising, albeit it is a contested vision. We have progressive segments of the population that have interpreted this slogan to envision a future with bodily autonomy, social, ethnic-national, and ecological justice, and thus implicitly centred the political agenda of reclaiming life in their practices.

But there is also a reactionary vision of the slogan; we have monarchist and nationalist opposition, which have tried translating the slogan according to their own political agenda and imposing an addition to it, which is “Mard, Mihan, Abadi” (literally means “Man, Homeland, and Development”). This translation of the Woman, Life, Freedom vision has indeed advocated for returning to what they have imagined as the glory of the past, mostly in the Shah era. So, they reclaim the past, not life.

What I am trying to say is that there is or was a contesting vision during the Jina uprising and it, at least discursively, claimed political alternatives and put forward certain visions for the post-Islamic Republic.

Bayat: I see your point. It is possible to suggest that various people who participated in the uprising might have a particular vision of the future. But we do not know what that was exactly since this is something that needs to be researched. Yes, some people might have interpreted Woman, Life, Freedom in terms of what you suggest — a very contested and perhaps contradictory vision. But these were only two groups whose voices could be heard. We do not know about the rest. I think that many thousand tweets that responded to the question “what was the uprising for” may give some indication of what people broadly wanted. On this basis, I suggested “reclaiming life” was a key demand, but one which highlighted the centrality of woman and the “woman’s question”. In this sense, the movement had a strong feminist undertone. And all these, in my view, derived from the particular totalitarian nature of this regime that has in many ways colonized life, a life in which women occupy a central place.

Yes, people might have had certain visions of the future order in their minds. I wanted to see an articulated version of such visions. They needed to be articulated clearly so that they could be translated into a tangible language that the majority of people could understand and identify with it. In the 1979 revolution in Iran, people also imagined their vision of the future in that major slogan, “Independent, Freedom, and Islamic Republic”. But theirs was a mere imagination and not an articulation. It was an imagined vision (political freedom, democratic governance, and independence from big powers) that turned out to be different from what the Islamist leaders of the revolution had in mind.

Farvardin: So that’s why I suggest they are revolutionaries but without revolution!

Bayat: Yes, in the sense of having an unarticulated image of the future. But revolution also requires means, resources, and strategic vision as to how to bring about political change. These were mostly absent, too. Unlike the Arab Spring uprisings, which did cause a revolutionary situation and, in some cases, the ousting of dictators, Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom did not even reach that stage.

Farvardin: Many things have changed since you wrote Revolution Without Revolutionaries. A second wave of Arab revolutions occurred in the region and Black Lives Matter protests took place in the USA. Chile and Argentina experienced massive protests against their governments, with feminists as the main protagonists. Since 2017, a different wave of protests has taken place in Iran, which led to the Jina uprising, as we discussed earlier. More recently, there has been a new wave of anti-colonial and anti-war protests as well as university encampments happening across the globe triggered by by Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza/Palestine. There are many other examples. Would you argue any differently in your book if you were to write Revolution Without Revolutionaries now? Do you recognize something significantly different between the current situation and a decade ago?

Bayat: This is a great question. I think that the key thing to think about is this element of temporality. We have been talking about revolution over the span of 14 years, and about uprisings since 2011. Clearly, the occurrence of a revolution in one country affects uprisings in other countries; in particular, in today’s world where it’s very well connected, and people actually follow the news, etc. So, people learn from each other but so do the regimes in terms of how to suppress the movements and control them. Now, I think that the revolutionary movements that have spread all over the world are creating some kind of “event” in individual countries; they are changing subjectivities and are producing new norms and alternative narratives that are opposed to those of the elites. In this sense, these movements are generating important changes in societies. But the regimes and the elites continue to remain in power. In other words, the movements are changing societies but are unable to change the political systems and their economic structures.

In fact, not only are these movements unable to change the regimes and the elites, but they actually make them scared and more security conscious. So, in response, the elites are taking extraordinary measures to suppress the protests and neutralize the changes that are happening in society, including shifts in attitudes and narratives brought about by revolutionary movements and uprisings. In other words, we are witnessing an extraordinary disjunct between the narratives of the elites and regimes and the narratives of society. In this sense, I am suggesting that we are experiencing a post-Gramscian moment. That is to say, the old Western liberal democracy, in which you were not supposed to see a separation between civil society and the state, is shifting. The hegemony of liberal democracy is crumbling. The states and the elites feel that they are losing control. They are losing control of dominant narratives because people simply do not buy them. People are developing their own alternatives through the new means of communication and media, etc. As a result, the elites and states are resorting to extreme legal measures and police violence. When your soft power does not work, you resort to hard power, legal manipulation, and police violence. In short, these liberal democratic states are becoming increasingly despotic and repressive. They are becoming like the repressive regimes of the Global South, which they used to criticize for violations of human rights.

Farvardin: You once highlighted non-movements or quiet encroachment strategies of the ordinary because there exist some free zones out of the control of the state authority. If I am right, you have a similar line of argumentation about the conditions of the possibility of Arab Spring. In other words, you contend that some degrees of opacity would be essential for resisting the state’s authorities in everyday life politics. Considering the current situation with regards to the advancement of surveillance technologies and AI, all these new technologies of coercion have been either exported to or produced in every corner of the world. In this context, how do you anticipate the future of the non-movements or social transformation from below in general?

Bayat: As I pointed out earlier, the elites seem to be losing control over the narrative (on, say, the economy, corruption, or the war on Gaza), especially among youth. This is partly because alternative sources of information and means of communication exist. But the new digital technologies have contradictory impacts. Although they are helping the protest movements, they are helping the elites even more. Yes, there was a time in the early twenty-first century, when the states, especially in developing countries, had not yet gotten their grip on social media and their potentialities. Many were caught by surprise. But then the states learned how to use the new technologies to manipulate and discipline. And now they are putting a lot of money into controlling social media and using it to reproduce their power. And in the past decade, there seems to be evidence in the countries of the Global South, especially in the Middle East, that the states have begun to bring those free zones or uncontrolled territories under their information node. For instance, they are gathering data and digitizing many things in the informal sectors. This is likely to restrict non-movements and subaltern resistances in the under-society where opacity works in favour of these everyday struggles.

Now, the states are the ones who are encroaching into those uncontrolled territories in order to colonize and control them. In some parts, such as in Egypt, the digitization of information from informal communities has caused a shift in control. Previously, residents had exclusive control over the information on these spaces, but now, the state is becoming more aware of the activities happening in these places. Residents are required to disclose their names, addresses, and income for taxation purposes, etc., which was not previously the case since they were not part of the formal economy. This shift may have a significant impact on the function and effectiveness of poor people’s struggles in these communities.

I think it is necessary to conduct research and study these new developments. Still, I would suggest that if the elites are able to restrict those free zones and limit the workings of the non-movements and everyday resistances, it could lead to an increase in street politics. This is because the street is a crucial space for expressing frustration and making claims for the subaltern groups. This change could shift non-movement dynamics from direct action to the politics of protest — that is, to mobilize in order to put pressure on the authorities to meet their demands, since actors may not be able to achieve their goals directly.

Farvardin: You mean the likelihood of a revolution is now higher than it was before.

Bayat: I think that we might see more incentives for street action, revolts, and even riots. Now, in such circumstances, if other social classes get involved, it could potentially lead to wider mobilization and protestation. However, this is a big if and depends on many contingencies, on how the state behaves. Would it reform or repress? But the potential for social upheavals becomes greater.

Farvardin: But it won’t necessarily be a progressive upheaval. It could be a fascist one!

Bayat: Here comes the vision—the idea of leadership, the idea of organization, and, more importantly, what people want and how emancipatory the vision is. The vision of what kind of future we want becomes even more crucial at such times, even more than what we’ve seen in the past.

Farvardin: On this point, it’s important to discuss hope. Vision inherently involves future. In other words, hope represents our expectations and aspirations for the future. What are your thoughts on hope and how it might manifest in our time?

Bayat: Hope is often associated with the future, but I think it also has ties to the past. Our past actions and achievements can shape our sense of what is possible in the future. Personally, when I think of hope, I recall a time when I was hiking in the mountains in my youth. I would look ahead and feel overwhelmed and dispirited by the long distance to the summit. However, instead of focusing solely on how formidable it is to reach the summit, I would look back and see how far I had already hiked. This reflection helped me realize that if I had achieved that much, there was no reason why I couldn’t achieve more in the future. In this way, hope is connected to our past accomplishments and experiences. By reflecting on these, we can envision possibilities for the future, find new strategies, and act accordingly. To me, envisioning those possibilities and acting on them becomes an arena of hope.

This interview was originally published in IRGAC.

The post “Revolution can happen even if people don’t think about it”. A conversation with Asef Bayat appeared first on Untold.

In practice, this quota has been used predominantly by the ruling Awami League to benefit their own supporters. The Awami League, one of the major political parties and one of the protagonists of the independence struggle, had ruled in an authoritarian manner for a decade under the premiership of Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the ‘founding father’ of modern Bangladesh.

After the protests erupted, Hasina met the students with unprecedented force, first with her private political militia and then the state forces, resulting in the death of hundreds of demonstrators. The sheer cruelty of the response led to widespread anger and waves of protest across the country. 

Sheikh Hasina’s government had faced protests before and consistently resorted to violent suppression. This time, violence proved not to be enough: what began as a student movement in mid-July grew by the first week of August into a widespread people’s revolt, culminating in millions marching to the capital Dhaka, and ultimately forcing the Prime Minister to resign and flee the country. 

A revolution long in the making

As it is often the case, revolutions begin from the simplest demands or a ‘small incident’, and this was no exception. For over a decade, Bangladesh languished under an autocratic regime – democratic processes were strangled, dissenters were forced into exile or killed, elections were rigged, and, most importantly, the country became a key site for neoliberal capitalist exploitation. 

Socio-economic indexes often tell us an opposite story of reality. According to the World Bank, Bangladesh “tells a remarkable story,” elevating itself from one of the poorest countries in the world to a middle-income country. 

But, as it often happens, data can be deceiving. One of the major developments is that the country has become the textile hub of the world since the early 2000s. In fact, it is likely that you are reading this text while wearing a t-shirt produced in Bangladesh. Textile production reached its peak in the last decade. According to the local Export Promotion Bureau data, in the fiscal year of 2021-22, Bangladesh exported garments worth $42.613 billion, making it the second largest apparel exporter in the world. 

While this meant more wealth in the hands of the capitalist class, the socio-economic situation of workers hardly changed. Thousands of workers died in different accidents in the factories in the last 15 years, as they hardly enjoyed any labor rights and their wages remained stagnant. With almost 85% of the workforce in informal employment, the socio-economic conditions of many in the country have not seen the kind of development described by macrotrends. 

In addition, even though Bangladesh’s GDP growth remained relatively high among developing nations, it largely remained an importing country. Beyond textiles, Bangladesh’s largest export is human capital. Approximately 7.4 million Bangladeshis live abroad, making the country the sixth largest in terms of out-migration globally. The Bangladeshi diaspora, often composed of workers living overseas with limited or no labor rights—and in some cases, without legal documentation—remains a critical financial lifeline for the nation. Each year, they send home $21 billion in remittances, a large segment of Bangladesh’s economy.

Under Sheikh Hasina’s regime, the neoliberal exploitation of natural resources intensified, with the Sundarbans and the Chittagong Hill Tracts becoming major sites of primitive accumulation. Sundarban recently became a site for the most important power plant project in Bangladesh’s recent history, endangering the diverse flora and fauna of the UNESCO heritage site. On the other hand, Chittagong Hill Tracts became the site for uncheckered mining, endangering nature and the indigenous communities living there.   

The role of India

The nature of the current protests, like Bangladesh’s political economy, cannot be fully understood without considering the role of India. The India-Bangladesh relationship is historically complex. Bangladesh was once part of British India and became the eastern province of Pakistan after the partition of 1947. India played a crucial role in Bangladesh’s liberation, hosting the exiled government and ten million refugees, and ultimately assisting the Bangladesh Liberation Army in defeating Pakistan in 1971. 

In the years that followed, India remained a close ally of the Awami League, first during Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s regime (1971-75) and then Sheikh Hasina’s (1996-2001 and 2009-2024). In between, Indo-Bangladesh relations experienced ups and downs. 

What is significant in relation to the July uprising is India’s increasing hegemonic role in Bangladesh’s political economy. Indeed, several infrastructural projects, heavy industries, and a large portion of the Bangladeshi market is under the control of Indian capitalists. A large number of Bangladeshis visit India for healthcare, education, and other reasons, even if the visa regime has become harder over time. This growing influence of the Indian capitalist class in Bangladesh accelerated under Sheikh Hasina’s regime, in exchange for strategic support from the Indian government. 

Sheikh Hasina’s government increasingly came to be seen as a satellite establishment of India, fueling widespread anti-India sentiment, which became a crucial component of the July Movement. Anti-India slogans and posters were ubiquitously present in the demonstrations, following several calls to boycott Indian goods since last year. The growing tension in India against minorities (especially Muslims) under the Hindu nationalist regime also contributed to the anti-India sentiments. 

Troubled past

During the last decade of Hasina’s rule, there was an unprecedented attack on democratic values and procedures. Opposition parties became almost non-existent, with the opposition leader of the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Khaleda Zia, placed under house arrest for years. There are claims that the 2018 and 2024 elections were blatantly rigged by the Awami League. Civil society opposition, as well as alternative social and political movements, were brutally suppressed by the police, secret police, and army. Kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, and illegal detentions became everyday occurrences in Bangladesh. Thousands were either killed or imprisoned or forced into exile. No one was spared: intellectuals, journalists, political activists, indigenous rights activists, and climate activists, all faced the same fate. 

Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian government has maintained its grip on power in Bangladesh not only through the use of violence but also by cultivating a political and historical consensus among the country’s secular and cultural elite. The recent events, and more broadly, the regime of Sheikh Hasina, must be understood within the context of Bangladesh’s history and the ideological battles that have unfolded since 1971.

Though Hasina had little democratic legitimacy, she wielded a certain cultural and ideological authority. Bangladesh has a troubled history and is still grappling with the legacy of the 1971 liberation war. During that war, Awami League and the left parties largely led the struggle against the Pakistani army while Islamist forces acted as collaborators of the Junta, actively participating in the genocide, mass-rape, and other crimes against humanity.

Until 2006, the period from the 1975 assassination of Mujibur Rahman, the leader of the Liberation Movement and the first president – save for the brief period of Sheikh Hasina’s premiership in the late 1990s – is largely perceived as a reversal of many ideals of Bangladesh’s liberation. Linguistic nationalism, secularism, and socialism were abandoned, and the war criminals of 1971 not only roamed freely but became part of the ruling coalition. 

In fact, after the assassination, the collaborators with the Pakistani regime during the liberation war, Jamat-i-Islami, were not only reinstalled by the military government but eventually became part of the government led by Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) between 2001 and 2006. 

Though BNP’s founder Ziaur Rahman was a decorated hero of the liberation war, it was during his military regime that Islamists were handed over the opportunity to return to mainstream politics. 

Therefore, when Sheikh Hasina returned to power in 2009, she had a mandate to complete the ‘unfinished liberation’- punishing the collaborators and assassins of her father, Mujibur Rahman. 

2013 marked the height of post-independence Bengali nationalism, when thousands of students and civilians took to the streets to ensure justice for the 1971 war criminals. Though it was a civil society movement in every sense, Hasina was the ultimate beneficiary, as it provided  her with impunity rooted in her father’s legacy and the Awami League’s role in Bangladesh’s liberation. Hasina capitalized on this by converting the cultural-historical legacy into a political license to silence all opposition, labeling them as anti-liberation forces when necessary. Practically, anyone questioning her authority was automatically branded a traitor to the legacy of liberation. 

At the same time, though Hasina crushed Jamat-i-Islami as a political entity, she did little to stop the increasing Islamization of the country. In fact, she made a tactical alliance with Islamists, allowing them to indoctrinate thousands and alter the social fabric, as long as they did not challenge her political authority. In simpler terms, she allowed Islamists to operate freely within limited political sovereignty, even letting them infiltrate the Awami League’s ranks. Meanwhile, she maintained the façade of being a secular leader, acting as the protector  of minorities and liberal culture, without whom Bangladesh would supposedly become an Islamist state.  

Glimpses of hope in an uncertain future

The larger question that now looms after the collapse of the tyrannical Hasina regime is: in which direction will Bangladesh go? The student movement, which forms the core of the protests, is not a homogenous political force. It lacks organizational structure, political vision, and most importantly, an ideological framework. 

The broad-based, grassroots open alliance that was the strength of the movement could quickly become its weakness unless a progressive political party with a clear agenda emerges, or the existing progressive leftist forces are able to guide the movement in the future, which so far does not look likely. 

In the aftermath of Hasina’s government’s collapse, Islamist forces began wreaking havoc across the country, attacking minorities, destroying “anti-Islamic” sculptures, and toppling statues of Mujibur Rahman. However, the Islamist forces were met with resistance. The progressive section of the movement and common people intervened to stop them together with  minority communities. While these actions provide hope that Bangladesh might not fall into another tyranny, Islamists and the right-wing Bangladesh Nationalist Party remain the strongest organized political forces at the moment.

If there were a free election tomorrow, they would likely win a majority of the seats.    

Another important factor in the future of the country is the role of the United States. We still don’t know whether the US or its allies played a role in supporting the anti government protests, but what is certain is that the regime change plays in favor of the US strategic vision in South Asia. The interim government formed after rounds of negotiation between the army and the protesters is being led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, who has close ties with the US establishment. Hasina’s government, because of several historical reasons and geopolitical compulsions, was averse to the US, becoming increasingly close to China. 

At this moment, there are two competing geostrategic projects that are becoming instrumental in navigating diplomatic relations in South and South-East Asia. The first one is China’s Belt and Road initiative, which would invest $40 Billion in Bangladesh reflecting the growing influence China has in the country. The second project is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) which tried to include Bangladesh in an anti-China alliance. Hasina was cautious and refused to get on board with a blatant anti-China military collaboration. This scenario is likely to change under the new regime, which is already showing more willingness to cooperate with the West.   

In this context, the lack of strong leftist and socialist forces that could have given this movement a more progressive direction is unfortunate. What is needed today is a new progressive political force that could break the cycle of tyranny that has marked the country’s post-independence history to ensure peace, justice, and democracy for all working classes, minorities, and every segment of society. 

However, this does not mean the current movement itself is reactionary. Bangladesh’s working people and democratic public have endured an immensely repressive phase over the last decade. The July Revolution has brought an end to an authoritarian regime, and this achievement deserves recognition and celebration.

The most important decision that the interim government has to make at the moment is when and how they are going to conduct the next election. It is difficult to predict when, but the legitimacy that this government earned through the “revolution” has its own expiry date. Until now, the government has not come up with a concrete roadmap for handing over the power to an elected cabinet. The hope and the relief that came with the change in government will quickly transform into frustration and anger unless the interim government finds a way to ensure a peaceful transition of power to the hands of elected representatives. 

It has been more than a week since the interim government has taken over and the political situation is stabilizing in Bangladesh. The institutions of the state, like the army, judiciary, and the bureaucracy, have not seen any radical reform yet, which can be an indication that the “revolution” has not brought any fundamental change, especially within the state apparatus and the political economy. Unless the interim government succeeds in bringing meaningful changes in the lives of the working classes and addressing the social and economic issues of the majority of Bangladeshis, one may expect there can be another round of protests and growing peoples’ movement and that could be decisive for Bangladesh’s fate. One can only hope that the young generation and the working class who inspired the July movement will soon emerge as a progressive political force that will guide the real changes in Bangladesh. 

The post Bloody July, revolutionary August: Explaining Bangladesh’s historic moment appeared first on Untold.

Perhaps, the slogan “From First Bread to Last Freedom” summarizes and amplifies the essence of these protests. They emerged in response to decisions by the regime’s government to lift subsidies on fuel, a mere day after increasing the salaries of state employees and retirees, both civilian and military, by 100%. Subsidized gasoline (90 octane) surged from 3.000 to 8.000 liras, while gasoline (95 octane) increased from 10.000 to 30.500 liras. Subsidized diesel rose from 700 to 2.000 liras, and industrial sector diesel jumped from 5.400 liras to 11.550 liras. This was accompanied by an unprecedented surge in the exchange rate of the Syrian pound against the US dollar, exceeding 15.000 liras. This left citizens, whose monthly income does not exceed the equivalent of 20 US dollars even after the increase, grappling with helplessness and uncertainty. “It is as if the authorities see no solutions to their problems apart from tapping into the pockets of the looted and exhausted people,” expresses Samar (a pseudonym), a young participant in these protests, via WhatsApp.

“While the locals draw on their own resources through social solidarity, and some lean on the support of their emigrant children, the situation has, as Mazen Badrieh, one of the organizers of the current movement, conveys to Syria Untold via WhatsApp, ‘reached a suffocating stage, surpassing the capacity of the local community to bear.'”

“The Old has Died, and the New has not yet Been Born… Contribute to Building the Future of the Country”  

This slogan, raised in one of the current protests (as reported by the Sweida 24 website on the 5th of September), embodies the vision embraced by the new movement. It signifies a departure from past disputes, while holding on to the unity of Syria, and the legitimate aspirations of the people. Samar (a pseudonym), one of the participants in the movement, asserts, “Today, people are more aware and mature. They have come to understand their needs. They do not wish for a repeat of 2011 because they now know that the extremists, whether from the regime or the opposition, do not seek a resolution in Syria. They aim to drag the protest movement back into the same old tunnel to control it and prevent it from achieving its goals”. Samar emphasizes that “the high prices paid by Syrians have not been in vain, they rather served as lessons and conclusions. Neither violence, sectarianism, military interventions, nor chaotic action are acceptable.”

Days before the protests, popular groups issued a call to the mountain’s residents, urging them to take to the streets daily, starting from Thursday, August 17, 2023, each group in their respective area.

 According to Mazen Badrieh, one of the current movement’s organizers, “This call was disseminated among various social and religious factions, including members of armed factions aligned with the regime, to inform them of the residents’ intention to peacefully demonstrate in pursuit of their rights. We hoped that those who chose not to participate would not obstruct the aspirations of their own people.” He further elaborated on these initial stages, “In our inaugural statement, we deliberately kept the demands measure, apprehensive that residents might hesitate to join. On the first day, we convened with those assembled in Karama Square, where we emphasized the imperative of a general strike. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Then, one of the protesters called for the regime’s overthrow, and the entire crowd chanted ‘down with… down with.’ We realized that the street was ready, and now we must follow its will.”

Following unanimous agreement on the necessity of the strike, a group of young peaceful protesters volunteered to ensure everyone’s adherence to the announced strike. The volunteers formed three teams, with each distinct tasks, such as the closure of the Baath Party offices in various cities and towns across the province, preventing any potential assaults on public institutions, and organizing sit-ins in public squares. According to the activists we contacted, the protesters also committed not to bear weapons during the protests under any circumstances.

 After the start of the protests, a group was emerged on a social media platform under the name “People’s Uprising.” Lubna al-Basit, a participating activist in the ongoing protests, elucidates the rational behind its inception and its purpose, stating via WhatsApp to Syria Untold, “The group is open, with anyone able to join it through its designated link. It was established to provide an open space for all opinions, even the most extreme, whether from the loyalist or oppositional perspective side. All ideas are subject to discussion. Then, a vote is taken on the proposal that carries a national and non-exclusive dimension, which does jeopardize the interests of any category of the people in the struggle to fulfill the movement’s demands.”

 Later, supporters of the Syrian regime circulated recordings and messages that reached this group as proposals from certain individuals, falsely claiming that they were leaked demands endorsed by the movement. However, both Lubna al-Basit (a group member) and Mazen Badrieh (the group’s administrator) have clarified that they were merely suggestions, deliberated upon and immediately rejected within the group. Badrieh emphasized, “Presenting these suggestions to the public as the movement’s demands by Rafik Latif and others is nothing but a distortion of the truth and an attempt to demonize the movement and divert its trajectory”. This in particularly true since “the security authorities are absent and concealed when they are truly needed, intervening primarily to suppress speech, and deploying their enforcers according to their directives against their own people,” as Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri said in his recent statement. The province has been suffering from a lack of security since 2014, while the Syrian authority has refrained from fulfilling its duty to safeguard civilians.

The Security Situation in the City

“The role of the Syrian authority in the province of Sweida shifted into a symbolic status between 2014 and 2015, largely due to various factors. Most notably, the emergence of local forces like ‘Rijal al-Karama’ [the Men of Dignity] movement, and the widespread refusal of compulsory conscription, which the regime perceived as an act of rebellion,” explains Rayan Maarouf, the editor-in-chief of Sweida 24 network, in a conversation with Syria Untold via Messenger.

 According to Maarouf, “These circumstances led to the diminishing influence of the regime’s central authority in the governate. The regime stipulated that Sweida’s men must return to serve in its army as a prerequisite for improving the security situation. Later, the role of local armed forces expended to fill the security void, and external threats —most notably the ISIS attack on the governate in 2018, further solidified this militarization within the local community.”

In response, the regime incorporated some local armed groups, granting selected members security credentials and varying degrees of authority. This instilled fear in the citizens, as these groups resorted to organized crime as a source of funding under the guise of authority.

 Due to the escalating activities of these armed factions, particularly the gang led by Raji Falhout, affiliated with the Military Intelligence Directorate, an armed civil uprising erupted in July 2022, with involvement from Rijal al-Karama and other factions. The armed confrontations ended with the dismantling of the gang’s headquarters and Raji Falhout’s subsequent escape.

The Historical Trajectory of the Revolutionary Movement in Sweida

Every movement undertaken by the governorate of Sweida faces the question, “Where were you since 2011?” The reality is that Sweida has been active in the Syrian scene since the start of the Syrian revolution against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2011. Calls for demonstrations in Sweida began in the earliest days of the Syrian revolution. Coordination committees were established, such as the Coordination Committee of Sweida Governorate, the Coordination Committee of Shahba, the Gathering of the Free of Sweida, the Sweida Governorate Coordination, the Shahba Coordination, the Ahrar Sweida Gathering, among others. Numerous sit-ins were organized to honor the martyrs, and daily demonstrations were conducted, often met with aggression from security forces and Shabiha (pro-regime militias). Activists and opposition figures who partook in these events were apprehended and some remain missing to this day, like Rami al-Hanawi, Yasser Aa-Awad, and Shafiq Shuqair, who have been detained since August 2012, with no information on their fate. Others have died in detention due to torture, like Nawras Hindi Abu Said, who was arrested on June 28, 2013, and succumbed to torture on January 16, 2014.

This peaceful revolutionary movement concurred with a union movement led by a group of Free Lawyers. They carried out the initial trade union protest in front of the Bar Association branch in Sweida on March 24, 2011. As per Ayman Shayb al-Din, a member of the Free Lawyers group, who I contacted via Messenger and WhatsApp, “The group’s initial statement included the Syrian people’s demands for freedom, dignity, and justice. They received official approval from the Lawyers Syndicate’s branch in Sweida, officially sealed with their stamp. They later formed a committee for voluntary and free defense of detainees and representation in various courts, covering all litigation expenses from their own resources through a designated fund.”

“The Free Lawyers, in collaboration with the Free Engineers, Teachers, Doctors, and Pharmacists, organized a trade union protest on July 19, 2011,” Shayb al-Din recounts. Afterward, they were attacked and beaten by the Shabiha. He recalls, “About 100 Shabih surrounded me, and I was in a doctor’s clinic in Sweida. This day and its details are unforgettable for me.”

In response, the Free Lawyers condemned this act, and initiated a sit-in within their union headquarters on July 21, 2011. According to Shayb al-Din, “Security forces and pro-government thugs besieged the union until 7:00 PM. They attempted to hit the union building with stones and gasoline, preparing to set it on fire. It was only through the intervention of civil society in Sweida that a secure and dignified exit for the lawyers was ensured.

This activity of the Free Lawyers angered the regime. Many among them were arrested multiple times. Some have since left Syria, while many remain on the wanted list of various security agencies. They are now present in the protest squares among the people, demanding freedom, dignity, and the establishment of the rule of law. On August 23, 2023, they issued a statement declaring: “To call for the government’s dismissal, based on its decisions against the people, is far from reality. Over the course of more than half a decade, Syria witnessed the succession of numerous governments within the current regime, each facing its own set of failures. We believe that the root of this failure lies with those who shape the nation’s policies in line with the constitution, particularly the President of the Republic, the supreme ruler with all executive, legislative, judicial, and security powers.”

The regime’s brutality escalated to suppress the peaceful revolutionary movement in Sweida. On July 5, 2012, activist opposition figures Mu’in Radwan and Safwan Shuqair were targeted in a bomb explosion that claimed their lives. Their deaths prompted thousands of protesters to take to the streets in mourning. In response, the regime unleased live bullets and tear gas canisters to disperse the crowds.

Armed Participation and Military Involvement in the Syrian Uprising

Militarily, some individuals from Sweida joined the armed confrontation with regime forces outside the governate’s borders. One of the most significant events during that period was the defection of First Lieutenant Khaldoun Zain al-Din, who joined the ranks of the Free Syrian Army in Daraa in mid-September 2011. The regime attempted to downplay the significance of this event by pressuring the Druze spiritual leader, Sheikh al-Aql, Ahmed al-Hajri, the brother of Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, to distance himself from Khaldoun in a statement broadcasted on Syrian media. However, Sheikh Ahmed rejected this demand as reported by media outlets. Later, the lieutenant was martyred in the Battle of Dhahr al-Jabal, where the Assad regime prevented the Free Syrian Army from entering Sweida on January 13, 2013. Due to security restrictions, the people of Zein al-Din were unable to hold a funeral or establish a funeral procession in his honor. Today, the current movement recalls his memory and his name is chanted in the squares. As the young activist Lubna al-Basit expressed in one of the recent demonstrations: “The revolution must persist, we are the children of Khaldoun Zein al-Din.”

Journalist and former detainee Anis Salloum believes that “the shift from revolution to armed confrontation against the regime in late 2012 and early 2013 affected the peaceful revolutionary movement in Sweida, much like it did across Syria. This was reflected in its momentum, which at times escalated and at other times subsided.” With the regime securing military support from Iran and Russia and reclaiming control over a significant portion of liberated areas, Sweida, which was already flooded with internal problems, experienced new form of demand-based movements, before reaching the current protests.

Demand-Based Protests

In recent years, Sweida’s public squares have witnessed diverse demand-driven protest activities, whether at the sectoral and factional level, like the recurrent strikes by public transportation drivers in response to insufficient fuel allocations. The website Sweida 24 quoted one of the drivers stating, “The distribution of gasoline allowances for public drivers is unjust. Most receive their allowances every ten days, which only covers operating the vehicle for four days.” These drivers even established a dedicated Facebook page to articulate their problems and demands.

Furthermore, there were protests by apple farmers due to the government’s failure to protect the main crop of the province and its farmers. The Syrian authorities addressed these various demand-driven protests with temporary solutions to prevent their escalation, such as implementing controls for apple sales and expediting the distribution of fuel allocations to the province.

In addition, there were protests triggered by immediate events. This included demonstrations by medical staff at the National Hospital in response to recurrent attacks they faced, as well as protests against the brutal and inhumane killing of a civilian by criminal gangs in a public park, among other incidents. However, they ended without a resolution to the overall security situation.

Notably, the most prominent protests were the civil movements organized by activists on a recurring basis from 2015 up to the present movement. The inaugural one, “Khanaqtuna” [You suffocated us] movement in September 2015, was a peaceful sit-in protest led by activists to advocating for improved living conditions. It came to an end after two bombings, one targeting Sheikh Waheed al-Balous’ convoy, and the other directed at the National Hospital. This heightened public anxiety and effectively ended the movement, as recounted by Shadi al-Dubaisi, one of its organizers.

Subsequently, in 2016, the arbitrary government decisions to dismiss opposition-affiliated teachers prompted student protests demanding the reinstatement of unfairly terminated educators. This was followed by a new movement named “Hattamtona” (“You Have Ruined Us”). Its participants held banners with messages like “The dignity of the teacher is the dignity of society.” In addition to livelihood-related demands, they called for the complete removal of occupying forces from Syrian territories and the release of all detainees. Simultaneous to the protesters’ sit-in, the regime called for a pro-government march, and gunfire was employed to disperse the demonstrators. This escalated tensions in the streets and discouraged further participation in subsequent protests, ultimately resulting in the movement’s cessation, according to Shadi al-Debisi, one of its organizers.

Additionally, in 2020, a new movement emerged under the name “Badna N’ish” (“We Want to Live”). Around 300 citizens participated, calling for “freedom, social justice, the resignation of Bashar al-Assad, and the release of detainees”, as described by Shadi al-Debisi. Demonstrators from this movement displayed a banner bearing the words, “Leave… We want a secular, civil state that unites Syrians and treats them equally.” “This movement was met with an escalated security response, leading to the arrest of several activists in June of the same year. They were released months later, thanks to the efforts of Rijal al-Karama movement,” as Shadi informs us.

In the following years, there were several notable protests, with the most significant occurring in December 2022. These protests culminated in the tragic loss of two lives, including a police officer, and the injury of 18 others at the hands of security forces. The governorate building was set on fire. The Assad regime accused the protesters of this act, yet a statement from the Media Office of the Spiritual Presidency of the Unitarian Muslims of the Druze on August 19 of the current year exonerated the youth of the movement. Delivered by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, this statement cautioned “against a recurrence of past incidents, particularly the burning of the governorate building by certain factions, attempting to destroy incriminating files related to major corruptions cases they were involved in. Some attempted to discredit the honorable protesters and falsely accuse them. However, the truth is evident to all.

What distinguishes the recent Sweida movement?

One of the most distinctive features of this movement is the open and explicit support of its demands by the spiritual leadership of the Druze community, represented by the two Druze sheikhs al-Aql, Hamoud al-Hinnawi and Hikmat al-Hijri. They figures were previously known for their moderate stances. Sheikh al-Hinnawi personally joint the protesters in the town of al-Qurayya, affirming his support for their cause. Additionally, the statement issued by Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri clearly unequivocally expresses his strong support for the movement’s demands, despite the heightened nature of these demands. He underscores the exhaustion of patience and the imperative for those in positions of authority to either serve the people or step down.

The statement emphasized: “Whoever is incapable of fulfilling their duty towards their family, homeland, and economy, should relinquish their position, without hesitation or attempting to obstruct their position. Our economy has fallen to rock bottom, and people are now left without means to sustain their livelihoods. People are left to fend for themselves, with no recourse but through drastic action.”

The stances of both al-Hinnawi and al-Hijri offered a protective social shield for the movement’s demands, encouraging an expansion of popular support. Dr. Jamal al-Shoufi, a political writer and researcher, points out that the Syrian opposition, spanning various Marxist, nationalist, and secular factions since the beginning of the revolution, has always carried a comprehensive national dimension. They rejected local flags, considering them symbols of a pre-state era.

Dr. Jamal tells Syria Untold via WhatsApp that the opposition factions in Sweida discovered that the popular extension of their political vision resonated widely with the national discourse of the spiritual authorities, particularly Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri. The popular street, which is not involved in the political process and rejects division over regime or revolutionary flags, responded positively. They reevaluated the issue of local flags raised by the people, recognizing their capacity to unite diverse crowds, especially since the accompanying discourse was one of Syrian unity, devoid of any sectarian or separatist dimension.

Al-Shoufi underscores the non-political nature of the flag of the five borders (the Druze flag raised in the protests), stating: “It is a civilian flag of solidarity. It is typically raised by the Moahidin Druze during crises or in religious settings, and it is not used for political purposes.”

Dr. Jamal al-Shoufi views the role of religious leaders in supporting the political movement as “supportive and inclusive, acknowledging the complexities of the Syrian situation and the importance of diversity. They presented themselves as moderate religious figures with a national discourse. They facilitated a platform for society to demand its rights, while distancing themselves from the direct political involvement, to which they do not aspire. Their stance on the movement was a supportive one, as they are sons of this people who are affected by injustice.”

On the other hand, Ramez Najib, a member of the political bureau of the opposition Syrian National Change Movement and its director in France, conveyed his views from Paris through Messenger: “I don’t object to the raising of local flags like the flag of the five borders, but my issue is with raising it alone without the flag of the revolution. Other local flags were raised at the beginning of the Syrian revolution, and the regime exploited them to label the uprising as terrorist, treacherous, or separatist.” He points out that “the flag of the revolution is officially recognized, not only by the Syrian opposition, but also by the United Nations and other international entities. It is necessary to raise it in the Sweida protests to refute the regime’s attempts to accuse the Sweida revolution of sectarianism or separatism. ”

The recurrent emphasis on secularism in Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri’s speech is interpreted by al-Shoufi as a distinction found in Druze religious literature. It sets apart religious figures who adhere to their own faith and remain independent from the contemporary figures, referring to those who are not religious, including civilians, politicians, and the people in general. This forms the “foundation of secularism rooted in the separation of politics from religious figures.”

The participation of Bedouin tribes in the current movement is noteworthy, representing an authentic facet of the Sweida community. This demonstrates a decisive effort to mend historically tense relations between the Druze and tribal components. The regime played the most prominent role in exacerbating these tensions since the events of 2000. Abu Mohammed (a pseudonym), a member of the Bedouin tribes involved in the recent protests, states: “This is the first time we participate in Sweida’s protests with this intensity. As the Bedouin tribes of Sweida, we support the demands of our people. We raised the flag of the five borders alongside the tribal flag to emphasize that we are one people against a criminal and murderous regime, clarifying that the rumors about demands for a Druze state are unfounded.”

It is also important to note the active role played by women in this movement. They lead protests, chanted, formulated slogans, organized sit-ins, and maintained it peaceful aspects. They also arranged peaceful civil and artistic activities, adding momentum to the movement, and inspiring more residents to join. Additionally, women actively participated in popular gatherings and attended meetings with spiritual leaders. They have been integral to the movement from its inception. According to Samar (a pseudonym), “Women in Sweida have always been and continue to be equal partners with men throughout history. Women’s emancipation is intertwined with the liberation of society as a whole. Today, women possess the experiences and expertise necessary to make their contributions indispensable and vital to any movement.”

“Rijal al-Karama” also Supported the Demands

The armed faction known as “Rijal al-Karama” [Men of Dignity], which is the most prominent armed group in Sweida, supported the demands of the movement. According to the faction’s media spokesperson, who preferred not to disclose his name, “In the past, it was difficult for us as an armed group, to intervene in any political or civil movement. However, in alignment with Sheikh al-Hijri’s stance and the positions of the spiritual authorities, and in solidarity with the legitimate demands of the people, we stand alongside the movement today. Our youth participate as civilians, as sons of this province, without carrying weapons. We unequivocally declare our full readiness to protect the movement from any aggression. Until now, we have adhered to Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri’s cousel to maintain the peaceable nature of the movement and to steer clear of violence. We endorse the wisdom of his vision.”

The “Rijal al-Karama” movement emerged as an armed social movement in 2013 under the leadership of Sheikh Wahid al-Balous (Abu Fahd), with the aim of protecting the region from potential attacks. It opposed the forced conscription of Druze youth into the Syrian army against their will, in aiming to protect the Druze community from becoming embroiled in the war for the interests of any party. Its founder raised the slogan “Syrian blood is forbidden to be shed by Syrians.” The movement also played a role in protecting the governate’s residents from arrests and pressing for the release of detainees.

The founder of the movement, Wahid al-Balous, along with numerous fighters from the movement, was assassinated in September 2015 when an explosion targeted his convoy in Sweida governorate. The Syrian government was held accountable, and following his assassination, his brother Sheikh Rafat al-Balous assumed leadership. The movement experienced a period of reduced activities before Rafat al-Balous officially announced his resignation from the leadership of the movement due to his health condition. On February 6, 2017, Sheikh Abu Hassan Yahya al-Hajjar took over leadership and remains the leader of the movement to this day.

Initially, the movement adopted a neutral stance towards the Syrian government, refraining from open opposition. However, it did not tolerate security forces violations and their presence in the governate. This position was articulated by its founder in a statement published on April 15, 2014, wherein he asserted: “We, upholders of a principle, made our stance clear from the onset of events, in one of the farms of our village, of which I take great pride in its history and its people. In the presence of a large gathering of the villagers, we left no room for doubt or hesitance. We are neither supporters nor opponents, but patriots. Whoever is not loyal to his sect is not loyal to his country. We have remained committed to this approach, and anyone who harms the sons of the sect is not one of us, and we are not of him.” Today, their position culminates in openly supporting the movement and participating in it.

Developments in October…

The peaceful movement in Sweida has entered its sixth week, even as the Syrian government attempts to provoke an armed confrontation. On September 11, the Sweida Governorate Council issued a statement expressing support solely for the citizens’ demands for better living conditions and the fight against corruption: “We stands with the citizens’ demands to improve their living conditions and combat corruption.” However, they also called for the suppression of the protesters, stating, “We urge the security forces and the responsible authorities to ensure the safety of employees, institutions, and departments, so they can carry out their work smoothly, providing services to the citizens without any disruptions.”

In swift response, the peaceful protesters demonstrated on September 13 in al-Karama Square, rejecting the statement that called for suppressing their movement. They conveyed their dissent through banners reading, “The Governorate Council does not represent me, it only represents its members.” On the same day, a violent incident occurred when shots were fired at a group of peaceful protesters in front of the Baath Party branch headquarters in Sweida.

Journalist Hassan Dweir, who was on the scene for media coverage, stated through WhatsApp: “A group of protesters headed to the square in front of the building and attempted to damage the statue of Hafez al-Assad. They were met with gunshots fired into the air to disperse the protesters by armed men positioned on the building’s roof. Three protesters were slightly injured by shrapnel.” Prior to this incident, there were reports circulating about the arrival of security reinforcements to the province’s police headquarters and the party’s branch, according to Dweir: “The gunfire was not intended for direct harm, but rather as an intimidation tactic.”

Following the incident, the protesters left the Baath Party branch building and proceeded to al-Karama Square, before heading to Sheikh Hakam al-Hijri’s farm to discuss the events, without resorting to violence in response to the aggression from the Baath Party’s.

In a recorded speech by Sheikh Hakam al-Hijri in light of the incident, he stressed the importance of self-restraint and the continuation of the movement peacefully. He condemned the statement of the Governate Council, asserting that they are a “non-legislative executive body,” without the authority to represent the people. He remarked, “In truth, the Governate Council is not elected, but rather appointed by a small group.” He also condemned the shooting incident, stating: “I am not surprised by what occurred. I know that any harm that befalls us will be due to these fallen party members. The squares belong to us, and we will remain in them peacefully, whether for two days, a month, two months, a year, two years, and we will not retreat.”

Sheikh Hamoud al-Hinnawi also condemned the incident, declaring, “Firing bullets cannot be tolerated. Anyone who seeks to harm our youth is an enemy who won’t live. We have dealt with this regime for a long time, leaving all avenues for communication, yet they do not respond. We have been silent for a long time to preserve the unity of the nation and the blood of our youth. The situation will not persist under oppression and injustice.” In response to these recent acts of violence, the protesters mobilized for a massive demonstration in al-Karama Square on Friday, September 15, described as the largest since the start of the protests. During this event, members of the Azzam family independently distributed Mansaf al-Malihiya dishes to the peaceful protesters. They also presented Mansaf to the police leadership in the governate, affirming their commitment to the peaceful nature of their movement and their rejection of deviating from this path.

Samar, speaking with Syria Untold through WhatsApp, says: “I am not distant from the people. I live with them and among them, and their concerns are my concerns, and their demands are my demands. We recognize that the road ahead is long, but what matters today is to focus on the economic, social, and political demands, and to push for the implementation of the political solution outlined in Resolution 2254. This is the slogan that people are now chanting in the squares.”

… and until the end of the year. Latest updates

The protest movement in Sweida city, southern Syria, ongoing since the middle of last August, has taken on a steady pace, becoming daily routine for the protesting communities, despite the decrease in the number of participations in comparison with the earlier days of the protests, and the decrease in Arab and global media attention in covering them, especially after the events of 7 October and the war of extermination on Gaza. 

Rayan Maarouf, editorial director of Sweida local news network, finds that “the decrease in the number of protesters is a natural situation” affected by, according to him, “primarily economic and livelihood factors such as the beginning of winter, in which economic burdens increase, including the costs of schools, diesel, mortar, and agriculture, as well as financial burdens imposed by the protest movement, since the largest participation comes from rural residents, who require transportation costs, interruption from work, etc.”

Still, dozens are uninterruptedly joining the squares in Sweida and a number of other cities and villages such as-Salkhad and Shahba, while maintaining the tradition of participating in the biggest demonstration every Friday in Karama Square, raising many slogans that confirm their desire to continue protesting, such as “we will not walk until you and all the Baathists leave”, raised in the first week of January 2023’s demonstration.

Sheikh Akl Hamoud al-Hinnawi and Hikmat al-Hijri also continue to support the movement’s demands for the necessity of political change in accordance with UN Resolution 2254, which gave the movement a clear and social validity, and greatly contributed to its continuation to this day, where Sheikh Akl of the Druze sect, Hikmat al-Hijri, gave a video interview on the website of The Spiritual Presidency of the Druze Unitarians on November 22, celebrating the continuation of the movement, and describing it as a “blessed, peaceful, free, national movement.”

Additionally, social and professional collectives have lately emerged such as “the health sector”, “lawyers” , “architects” and “economic actors” groups, along with cultural groups such as “the Sweida artists group” and the “Sweida writers group”.

The writer Angel Al-Chaer says that “these collectives are not unions but groups participating in the protest movement; they belong to different sectors, and have provided a civil form to the movement, with some of their members being registered in official unions.” 

Rayan Maarouf adds: “we cannot call these groups alternative unions, because they did not follow any procedure to take over the official union groups. They are however professional groups that can in the future provide an alternative option to the unions, and this takes a big effort that is not just about protesting in the squares, but about an accumulative and long-term organizational work that enables forming alternative unions, and this is of course tied to political change because the current unions are dominated by the regime and the Baathist party”.

The protesters’ peaceful presence in the squares and their slogans demanding freedom and change are still the most prominent feature of the Sweida movement, while attempts to develop and sustain the protests are still under discussion, such as the working paper presented by representatives of the southern countryside of Sweida movement, which included a set of proposals like “establishing a constituent council for the entire governorate by electing a representative for each movement location in villages and cities, where the total number of elected members forms the Constituent Council, and where the city of Sweida becomes more than a movement location. The council will meet in Sweida and its first session will be led by the oldest member, and the first meeting will be used for introductions and to open the door for candidates to run for the election of a political committee, whose number is determined by the council, and whose mission is to lead and serve the movement in order to implement its goals to peacefully overthrow the regime. The Council determines the work duration of this committee, which will be responsible before the Constituent Assembly through a periodic meeting to discuss what has been and can be accomplished and worked on.”

The post From first bread to last freedom: Syrians are still protesting in Sweida appeared first on Untold.